Albania In two years, 337 cases of trafficking for prostitution

January 23, 2009

Comment: In two years, 337 cases of trafficking for prostitution have been identified in Albania, according to this article. The Albanian daily newspaper describes the conclusions of the report “State of Efforts in Albania to Combat Trafficking in Persons 2007 – 2008” p repared by a USAID projec t"CAAHT":http://www.caaht.com (Coordinated Actions Against Human Trafficking). The report presents the trends in human trafficking based on data provided by four anti-trafficking shelters that are part of the National Referral Mechanism. The report itself focuses on trafficking of human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation, with less attention to other types such as trafficking for labor etc.

Starting from the title and going to the end of it the article is full of inaccuracies. First of all, the number of victims is not 337 as mentioned in the article. That is the total number of the persons assisted in those 4 shelters. According to the CAAHT report, the number of victims and presumed victims is 133. The rest of the persons assisted in shelters are illegal migrants or victims of abuse. Moreover, the journalist confuses victim of trafficking and matches them with prostitution. Misquoting the report, the author labels Egyptian and Roma as nationalities, while according to the Albanian law the Roma are ethnic minority whereas Egyptians are recognized only as a group.

Apart from misquoting the USAID funded report, the author fails to bring about key points of this report which are that victim identification remains low and is still a problem in Albania especially considering the high number of persons deported from Greece (according to the report 18.000 persons were deported for 2007-2008). Moreover the reports points out that “The National Referral Mechanism is weak, and cooperation with law enforcement is erratic. At the same time, identification of victims of trafficking remains overwhelmingly dependent on law enforcement.”

More so, the reports concludes that more needs to be done to prevent vulnerability and increase community involvement in prevention.

Author of the comments: Vasilika Laci, Child Protection Officer Tdh Albania