RIGHTS-BALKANS: Campaign Against Child Trafficking Begins

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Oct 14 2003 (IPS) - A regional campaign against children trafficking was launched this week in Serbia amid reports of an alarming rise in such cases.

A regional campaign against children trafficking was launched this week in Serbia amid reports of an alarming rise in such cases.

Street posters and clips over major TV channels are warning people of the dangers to children. ‘Save the Children UK’ is in the forefront of the campaign along with several local organisations.

"Child trafficking has become the most gruesome type of crime in the past years," Marko Sinadinovic from the Belgrade branch of ‘Save the Children UK’ said at a seminar Monday.

"Police statistics from different areas of the world put the number of victims of child trafficking at 700,000 to 1.2 million a year," said Jasminka Milutinovic from ‘Astra’, a Belgrade-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) that helps abused children. "It has become the third most lucrative type of crime worldwide after the illegal drugs trade and adult human trafficking."

United Nations Children and Education Fund (UNICEF) statistics released in June said that 1.2 million children are trafficked worldwide each year.

"There is an alarming rise in child trafficking, especially children coming from the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe," the UNICEF report said. "While the number of children coming from Eastern Europe is not known, it is thought to be in the tens of thousands each year."

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe (SPSEE), the regional European Union (EU) guided body, released a report on human trafficking earlier this month with child trafficking being singled out as the most dangerous problem.

The report covered Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro, and Romania. Croatia was not included because authorities there have not yet developed a method for identifying and assisting victims. Since 2000 the country has identified only five victims of trafficking. The real number is believed to be far higher.

The SPSEE report says that more than 5,000 victims of human trafficking have been identified and assisted in the region between January 2000 and June 2003. The report does not specify the number of children, but says "it is on a significant rise".

In Bulgaria the report says half the victims of human trafficking were minors (under 18). In Albania, the number climbs to 65 percent.

Children are trafficked for many purposes – begging, stealing, and for sexual abuse and for the pornography market, the report says.

"Previously, children were trafficked in African and Asian countries," Vlastimir Vulikic who heads the department for juvenile crime at the Serbian Interior Ministry told IPS. "Now it’s children from former communist countries that are being smuggled to Western Europe, where they become sex slaves or criminals."

Child trafficking is the result of devastating poverty, he says. "Its victims come from social strata that lack everything in every sense – emotional, economic, educational," Vulikic says. "Guided by promises of better life abroad with little work and good earnings, children listen to their parents, and believe they would achieve this goal."

The mediator involved in children trafficking who persuades families to let their child go abroad usually comes from the immediate surroundings, Vulikic says. "It’s a friend, a neighbour. Parents and the child trust that person and believe the imaginary world presented. The saddest thing is that the child is being treated as an object by parents, the mediator and all the others."

Serbia is believed to be the country of transition for most of the victims of child trafficking coming from Central and East European countries. "After passing through, they end up either in Albania or on the Montenegrin coast, where it is easy to transport them by boat to Italy and later to Western Europe," Vulikic says.

Serbian authorities joined the efforts of regional police systems to fight this crime only last year. But few of the disappeared children end up as police cases. According to government statistics, there were 74 cases of child trafficking registered last year in Serbia.

Last December the police at Belgrade airport discovered a 14-year-old Roma girl who had travelled with a person not her father. Their passports had the same surname, but her passport was forged. Investigations showed that her mother had sold the girl for 300 dollars to a mediator.

In Albania, parents sold a three-year-old boy to a mediator for the price of a colour TV set. The mediator took the boy to Italy where he was later said to have been sold to a family that wanted to adopt a child.

Reports in Italian media last week pointed to a centre for child trafficking in Pescara town, across the Albanian and Montenegrin Adriatic ports. Local investigators were reported saying that some 30 children under the age of 14 were being kept hidden in Pescara after being smuggled from Albania. This child trafficking ring was detected after Albanian authorities arrested its leader earlier this year.

Experts see little hope for children who become victims of trafficking. "Their chances of recovery or re-integration are very small," psychologist Zarko Trebjesanin told IPS. "It takes a lot of time and effort, if it is possible at all."