TOPIC OUTLINE

For as long as there`s civilization, slavery has been around. Indeed, during Hammurabi a man was so much a master of his fortunes that he could voluntarily sell himself to slavery. It was used as a form of punishment all up until recently.

Today, it is considered that slavery infringes upon fundamental human rights, and has been criminalized for centuries now. Still, it is not completely abolished. Today it takes place in the form of trafficking in human beings (THB), and South-East Europe is one of the most problematic areas in the world, due to the specific historic circumstances.

As concern over trafficking in Asia and Europe reemerged after World War Two, the United Nations drew on earlier LON efforts, and earlier agreements and conventions, to introduce the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others in 1949. This Convention broadly called on member states to punish those engaged in the trafficking of persons for purposes of prostitution, but again gave governments “primary responsibility for reporting their own compliance.” The convention initially attracted only 14 signatories, and still had less than 75 parties by the year 2000.

The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime was adopted by General Assembly resolution 55/25 of 15 November 2000. It contained a Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, which entered into force on 25 December 2003. It is the first global legal instrument with an agreed definition on trafficking in persons, which encompasses:

the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

In practice, governments and nongovernmental actors continue to define trafficking in terms of two broad categories—forced labor and sexual exploitation. In the Western Balkan region, the absence of a consensus on the definition of trafficking as well as a consensus on how best to address the trafficking problem have resulted in institutional steps by governments geared more towards the goal of EU accession and in policy practices mired in contradictions. For those states seeking membership in the EU, the Stabilization and Association Process and actual accession agreements also have placed greater emphasis on issues of enforcement and border control than on linking human trafficking to issues of victim protection and broader root causes.

According to recent reports made by international organizations whose mandate deals with the issue, the South-East Europe region, despite an overall decrease of reported cases of trafficking in human bodies, is still the epicenter of human trafficking in Europe. The mechanisms and infrastructure as established during the 1990s, to a large extent influenced by the demand generated by an expanding pool of United Nations and NATO international peacekeepers, remain an active route bridging Western-European countries’ demands and the South-East European trafficking market fueled by ongoing instabilities in the region.

According to the extensive UN overviews of the trafficking situation in South-East Europe, most Western Balkan governments entered the new millennium with criminal codes that criminalized prostitution and the mediation of prostitution. Enforcement of these measures, however, was limited at best. Furthermore, anti-trafficking legislation and consideration of the treatment of prostitution in such legislation were still in varying stages of introduction.

After nine years of producing organized crime situation reports, in 2005 the Council of Europe argued, “In south-eastern Europe in general, trafficking in human beings appears to be declining – or at least has become less visible.” The 2007 CARPO report on organized crime in the region argues that trafficking for sexual exploitation “seems to decrease”, but, “it is still unclear whether there is a real decrease in the number of persons trafficked from or through South-Eastern Europe into the EU or a trend change in that there appears to be more ‘internal trafficking’ in some of the project areas and a more ‘hidden market’”.

Despite the development of a common understanding of human trafficking and in the establishment of international legal norms regarding trafficking in persons in recent years, there is still lack of progress in determining the scale and magnitude of human trafficking and in developing effective ways to collect helpful and accurate data. As more countries begin to enact and implement the necessary anti-trafficking legislation, the potential for data accuracy increases. Consequently, anti-trafficking mechanism may become more effective.

POSSIBLE ISSUES/QUESTIONS:

- need to address root problems of trafficking in human bodies

- need to raise public awareness about the problem

- further enforcement of already existent measures and anti-trafficking mechanisms

- raising awareness about the need for better data (lack of proper research)

- possible improvement of rehabilitation measures