By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, May 10 2004 (IPS)

Amnesty International is calling on the European Union to step up its financial and legal support for the fight against trafficking in women in Kosovo.

The human rights organisation is urging the European Union (EU) to ensure that women and girls are protected under its crisis management and peacekeeping engagements.

The call follows the release of the Amnesty report ‘So does that mean I have rights? – Protecting the human rights of women and girls trafficked for forced prostitution in Kosovo’. The report details the suffering of women who are trafficked and forced into prostitution in the country.

The report released in Brussels Monday reveals that trafficked women and girls are exposed to human rights abuses including “abduction, deprivation of liberty, and denial of freedom of movement, torture and ill-treatment, including psychological threats, beatings and rape.”

Kosovo has become a major destination country for women and girls forced into prostitution following deployment of an international peacekeeping force in July 1999.

The organisation found that in addition to women trafficked into Kosovo from outside, predominantly from Moldova, Bulgaria and Ukraine, increasing numbers of Kosovar Albanians – the majority of them believed to be minors – are being internally trafficked.

According to Amnesty, Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, has some 200 bars and brothels where sex can easily be bought, whereas in 1999 this figure was just 18.

It says that women are smuggled across borders and are sold for between 60 and 4,100 dollars.

Most are from Eastern Europe. Many are locked in dark rooms. Their passports are taken away, they are undernourished and are denied access to medical treatment, the report says.

Kosovo’s borders with Serbia, Albania and Macedonia are said to facilitate smuggling and organised crime.

The report says that the international community running Kosovo is doing little to prosecute the men responsible for the abuses.

“It is outrageous that the very same people who are there to protect these women and girls are using their position and exploiting them instead – and they are getting away with it,” Amnesty said.

Kosovo has been under de facto UN rule since deployment of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) peacekeepers in the summer of 1999.

There are more than 20,000 NATO peacekeepers, UN police and other international officials in the country, where prostitution is illegal.

More than 36,000 soldiers from EU nations are serving as members of the Kosovo Force (Kfor).

Amnesty says that these officials now “constitute 20 percent of those using the services of trafficked women and girls” and “generate a significant part of the industry’s income.”

Kfor and UN personnel are immune from prosecution in Kosovo, but this immunity can be waived by a special order. However, this has only happened twice since 2002.

The report says that “with clients including international police and troops, the girls and women are often too afraid to escape, and the authorities are failing to help them.”

Even after women and girls have escaped their traffickers or been rescued by the police, “many trafficked women and girls are subsequently vulnerable to violations by law enforcement, criminal justice and other agencies,” the report says.

“Some may have been themselves arrested and imprisoned for prostitution, or status offences, and denied access to the basic rights of detainees,” the report says. When they are arrested, Amnesty says many women are not allowed access to lawyers.

Amnesty is demanding that the EU and its member states address the “root causes” of trafficking and protect the rights of the women and girls involved in the process.

It adds that the women should be given the right of redress and repatriation.

“Given the EU’s strategic importance in Kosovo, Amnesty International calls on the EU to do more, both financial and legally, to help fight the deplorable practice of trafficking in women and girls, which is occurring right on the doorsteps of the EU,” said Dick Oosting, Director of Amnesty’s EU office.

“Women and girls are being trafficked out of Kosovo into EU countries including Italy, the Netherlands and the UK,” he added in a statement. “More needs to be done at EU level to prevent trafficking, as well as protect the victims, whose rights are frequently left unprotected by the law.”

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