by Alfred Topi
National correspondent Albania
In the past decade, Albania has been transformed into a country of origin as well as a country of transit for the trafficking of human beings. From an absolutely unknown phenomenon during the communist regime, the trafficking has become one of the grave maladies of Albanian society during the so-called transition period towards a free market economy.
Poverty and unemployment, low salary levels and a generally poor quality of education and social services were the main factors that fed the movement of Albanians towards western countries. The economic and social situation of women and girls (exclusion, domestic violence, a lack of education), particularly those from rural areas, led to considerable trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation. The situation was exacerbated by a low level of public awareness regarding the dangers and techniques used by traffickers, especially since there is no social stigmatization attached to illegal migration in Albanian society.
The fight against trafficking in human beings is not one of the strategic objectives of the ILO. Other UN specialized agencies, the Council of Europe and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) deal directly with this phenomenon. Their measures recently have been of an important scope and dimension in response to this increasing trend. Nevertheless, ILO activities in Albania overlap with the anti-trafficking programmes of these other organizations. In 2002, the InFocus Programme (IFP) on Promoting the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work launched the Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour (SAP-FL). The project is entitled “Combating Trafficking and Forced Labour in the Balkans, Southern and Eastern Europe”.
The project produced a rapid assessment survey, which was assessed by a wide audience consisting of representatives from the government, the social partners, international organizations, foreign and local NGOs, and other actors. The assessment produced some recommendations for preventiing trafficking and providing protection to victims. The most important of these are the following:
- • Alternative employment opportunities must be created for potential victims and traffickers.
- • Efforts to encourage girls to attend secondary school in rural areas should be promoted.
- • The level of social assistance for rural women should be improved, with female headed farming households made eligible for social assistance.
- • Policing and enforcement efforts to interdict and prosecute human trafficking rings should continue to receive high priority, even if a decline in the incidence of trafficking is believed to occur.
- • Standard Europe-wide working guidelines for police collaboration to prevent trafficking should be drafted and adopted, based on real trust and mutual exchange of intelligence.
- • More research into the root causes of trafficking and links to outward migration needs to be performed, to identify the precise areas most vulnerable and determine more accurately which communities are producing victims and traffickers. There is also a need to analyze communities with similar socio-economic and demographic profiles, where trafficking is not occurring. The research, data collection and analysis should be compiled at a central point and made available to the public and to all those working on the trafficking issue.
In line with these recommendations, the project is actually working to define the next step in its intervention to combat trafficking and forced labour.
The ILO, in partnership with the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe (Task Force on Trafficking of Human Beings), launched another project in 2003. Entitled “Employment, Vocational Training Opportunities and Migration Policy Measures to Prevent and Reduce Trafficking in Women”, the project covers three origin and transit countries: Albania, Moldova and Ukraine. The specific aim of this project fits perfectly with the recommendations of SPA-FL to find alternative employment opportunities for potential victims and traffickers. With this project, the ILO will address the root factors driving migration through:
- the generation of sustainable employment, by providing small enterprise support, business plan training, and skills training in services, building on past work for promoting small businesses for women
- provision of training in specific sectors and services with known vacancies, with priority given to those skills that seem to be in greatest demand.
The activities of this project actually started with the seminar “Managing a National Programme against Trafficking in Human Beings: Addressing the Labour Market Dimensions”, which was organized at the Turin International Training Centre on 21–23 January 2004. The course was attended by participants from Albania, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, representing governments, labour ministries, state migration authorities, workers and employers, and staff on the implementation units of ILO projects, among others.
The seminar served to lay a foundation for strengthening the role of labour market institutions and gaining synergies among them in national anti-trafficking programmes. This will feed into ongoing projects against human trafficking implemented by the International Migration Branch (MIGRANT), the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and SAP-FL in four countries, including Albania. More precisely, it helped to:
- raise awareness of the labour dimension of human trafficking among labour market officials from the four countries
- gather information on national labour market institutions and their functioning
- analyze recruitment mechanisms and job placement for migrant workers abroad
- evaluate and compare services provided to victims of human trafficking, focusing on alternative livelihood schemes and victim reintegration
- identify priority actions for the implementation of the Comprehensive Programme on Training and Capacity Building to Address Trafficking in Human Beings in South Eastern Europe.
In 2004, we expect a year full of ILO activities to combat forced labour and the traffic in human beings. Alfred Topi National correspondent Albania newsletter
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| Fully fit at work |
Film about the advantages of employing persons with disabilities. As this ILO film (Fully Fit at Work) shows, not only may people with disabilities be more productive, they may actually be more skilled in some jobs than non-disabled people. Produced for the ILO by the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing.
Watch the film online in Polish with English subtitles. Duration: 21 min 11 sec
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