Europe Safeguarding rights to prevent trafficking for labour exploitation focus of OSCE-hosted Alliance Conference in Vienna

Project : Regional Office 20 Jun 2011 | child begging child exploitation child trafficking

Vienna, Austria, 20-21 June 2011:Social justice as a core element in the fight against human trafficking for labour exploitation will be a main focus of the 11th High-Level Alliance against Trafficking in Persons Conference to be hosted by the OSCE.

Protecting human rights and workers’ rights is crucial to fight exploitation, including exploitation of migrant workers who are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. The conference will address labour migration policy and anti-trafficking actions, codes of conduct, the role of workers and their organizations, access to remedies and social inclusion of trafficked persons. Several high-level speakers will address the event.

A special side event organised by the Swiss delegation to the OSCE will discuss exploitation of children for the purposes of begging.

The Alliance conference, hosted by the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, brings together more than 300 participants, including senior government officials, national anti-trafficking co-ordinators and rapporteurs, representatives from international and non-governmental organizations, law enforcement agencies and trade unions, as well as employers’ organizations and migrants’ rights groups.

Speakers at the conference include: Giammarinaro, Damien Green, the UK Minister of State for Immigration, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, and Sergey Lebedev, Chairman of the CIS Executive Committee, UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov and Ignacio Ramonet, President of the NGO Memoire des Luttes and Former Director of Le Monde Diplomatique France.

The full programme of the conference, including the full list of high-level speakers, is available here

Parts of the conference will be webstreamed.