Job Openings: European Roma Rights Center

European Roma Rights Center
Legal Consultants for trafficking study

The ERRC is currently seeking 4 legal consultants to work on a project it is implementing in partnership with People in Need Slovakia (PiN) on trafficking Romani youth and women in Eastern and Central Europe. Within this project, implemented in Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria, the ERRC and PiN seek to analyse the effectiveness of national laws and policies in prevention and victim support, and are looking for consultants for its implementation.

The project requires a highly qualified applicant for the role of Legal Research Coordinator, as well as legal consultants from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Romania with expertise in trafficking issues. The consultants will map the existing anti-trafficking laws, policies, data collection and support services and trends in the changes of these.

In addition to the regional languages, all consultants are required to communicate with the ERRC and produce reports in English of a high level.

The Legal Research Coordinator should preferably be based in Budapest, and should ideally have regional familiarity with laws, policies and support frameworks on trafficking. The coordinator will:

· Contribute to the development of research methodology for a team of 5 country-based legal researchers;

· Participate in a training of the country researchers;

· Coordinate the work of and provide guidance to country researchers in implementing the study;

· Ensure quality control of the outputs of the country researchers; and

· Contribute to the drafting of a comprehensive report on trafficking Romani women and youth in Europe.

The Legal Research Coordinator should have a law degree and at least four years experience working on trafficking issues in the region. Experience working on trafficking of Roma preferred. The Coordinator should have experience in the coordination of research projects and teams.

The Legal Researchers must be based in Romania, Bulgaria and Czech Republic, and should be familiar with the national laws, polices and support frameworks on trafficking in the relevant country. The Legal Researchers will:

· Participate in a training progamme for researchers on the study, organised by the ERRC and PiN;

· Conduct a professional analysis of the national laws, policies and support frameworks on trafficking in their country, with a view to trends in the development of such and impact on Roma;

· In accordance with the methodology provided, submit national reports to the ERRC, and revise as requested;

· Contribute to the development of a comprehensive report on trafficking Romani women and youth in Europe, by providing recommendations.

The Legal Researchers should have a law or social sciences degree and at least two years experience working on trafficking issues in their country. Experience working on trafficking of Roma preferred. The Legal Researchers should have experience in conducting legal and policy analysis.

Application Process

Applicants should submit a cover letter clearly indicating which consultancy position they are applying for, as well as their curriculum vitae, an example of past similar work and two references, to:

Hajnalka Nemeth
European Roma Rights Centre
Fax: (36-1)413-2201
E-mail: hajnalka.nemeth@errc.org

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: Wednesday, 25 February 2009.

All applicants will be notified of our receipt of application; only selected applicants will be contacted.
The ERRC is committed to equal opportunity for all. Romani candidates are particularly encouraged to apply.

Child Sex Trafficking in Europe

Special Trafficking Operation Program

A Horrible Business

From the Economist:

CONSIDERING it is a business that has provoked wars in centuries past, scant attention is paid to the modern slave trade. But one way to track the trade in people is the recently released annual report on trafficking in persons from America’s State Department. And it makes for gloomy reading. Though there have been improvements of late, the numbers of people involved are still appallingly high. Approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders each year and millions more are traded domestically. The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least 12.3m people in forced labour at any one time, including sexual exploitation, as a result of trafficking.

Efforts to wipe out this modern slave trade are hampered because human trafficking is a big business. It is impossible to know the exact sums involved but recent estimates of the value of the global trafficking trade have put it as high as $32 billion. The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking describes it as a high-reward and low-risk crime. People come cheap and many countries lack the necessary laws to target traffickers, or they are not properly enforced. Worse still, it is often the victims of the traffickers that are treated as criminals.

Women suffer most in this respect: the report estimates that 80% of victims of international trafficking are women forced into some form of prostitution. Women are involved in trafficking too, though this is less common. In Europe and Central and south Asia women are often recruited by other women who were themselves the victims of trafficking. In part to avoid detection by the authorities, traffickers grant victims limited freedom while simultaneously coercing them to return home to recruit other women to replace them.

The report also casts a light on the increasingly important role that technology is playing in the trade, both in combating it and its perpetration. The internet helps to identify and track down the perpetrators but increasingly it is becoming part of the problem. Chatrooms are used to exchange information about sex-tourism sites; people are targeted through social-networking sites where pornographic records of sex trafficking are also bought and sold; victims are ensnared through instant messaging.

There are a few bright spots. Ethiopia is commended for its efforts to combat the trafficking of children by establishing child-protection units across the country. Romania’s creation of a national database to identify and respond quickly to trends in trafficking is also praised as is Madagascar’s campaign to wipe out sex tourism.

Read the full article

The power of technology, both as a tool to fuel or prevent trafficking is an interesting and necessary discussion.

During the past two decades we have experienced the rise of the Internet and its incredible capacity to disseminate information, give a voice to the unheard and spur social change. The emergence of bloggers sounded the bell that the opinions of citizens, of individuals mattered- no longer was news limited to large organizational filters. Social networks established a new means of connecting with others and mobilizing action. In short, the Internet largely democratized information and created the power of connection between individuals across the world on a previously unimaginable level.

At the same time, whether it be environmental degradation, the Iraq war, soaring grain prices or the prevalence of modern day slavery, it is clear that we live in a time of serious global problems that we cannot afford to ignore. On its own, technology, and principally the Internet, offer the raw potential to connect, interact and have access to information on a level previously unheard of. This potential can be used, as mentioned by the above article, in innovative ways that either promote trafficking or prevent it.

One of the running themes of this blog is to identify innovative uses of technology to combat trafficking, for example initiatives led by Microsoft, MTV, Ashoka Changemakers and let's not forget the great viral videos by the guys and gals at the Freeze Project. I believe, however, that we are just starting to tap into the full potential of the Internet to effectively combat trafficking. I am not, however, making this criticism without offering some solutions of my own. The upcoming Human Trafficking Project website (not this blog) will launch next month and includes a few examples of how we can use technology to easily connect and work together to fill much needed gaps in the global anti-trafficking effort.

Romanian & International NGOs Work Together to Fight Trafficking

From Reuters:

Over 40 representatives of national and international NGOs, Churches and local authorities dedicated to combating human trafficking came together to find common approaches to identifying the most effective trafficking prevention campaigns, the most efficient and coherent legislation and the best counselling and reintegration strategies for the victims of trafficking in the Romanian capital Bucharest recently.

The participants focused on creating an international network of people working in preventing and limiting the effects of trafficking.

Starting with February 2008, World Vision Romania, through its office in Iasi County, North-Eastern Romania, started a new pilot project dedicated to preventing human trafficking in a rural community where WVR has been working. Due to the migration phenomenon intensifying especially in Romania's poorest rural areas, the danger of being exposed to trafficking has increased significantly.

'There are many people interested in working abroad, especially young people who are 'charmed' into believing unverified success stories presented by friends or relatives who have already left the country in search of a better life. Our work in this community right now consists of organizing monthly informational sessions for over 180 children and vocational courses for another 60 young people in the community, in order to help them access better jobs, here in Romania', said WVR project coordinator.

According to the Romanian National Agency Against Trafficking in Human Beings statistics, since January 2007, 936 Romanian citizens were identified as victims of human trafficking in Europe, for the following reasons (some of the victims were trafficked for various reasons): The distribution of victims according to the type of exploitation: 406 – sexual exploitation, 425 – labor exploitation, 171 – on the street, 253 – construction, 145 – agriculture, etc.

Read the full article

"Happy" Trafficking

From RFE/RL:

Lia was lured by a "friend" from her native Moldova with promises of a job and a better life. But once in Turkey, those hopes were quickly replaced with fears for her life after the acquaintance turned her over to sex traffickers. She'd been "betrayed" and unwittingly sold into a nightmare existence. "I was humiliated, and I can't find the right words to describe the horrors I was going through," Lia told RFE/RL's Romania-Moldova Service after she'd managed to escape. "I took a bath every time I came across some water, hoping the soap could wash away all the pain from my body. There was not a single day without sexual abuse and threats."

Reliable data are hard to find, but an estimated 2.5 million people are victims of forced labor at any given moment around the world, many for sexual exploitation. Victims are trafficked across borders, regions, and continents as part of a trade that reaps some $32 billion a year -- half of it from transactions in the industrialized world.

The antitrafficking community -- allying government officials, multinational organizations, and civil-society activists -- fears that the prevalence of a tactic known as "happy trafficking" could extend the reach of traffickers and exacerbate the problem.

The method minimizes risks to organizers and maximizes profits in a sort of human pyramid scheme. It combines physical and psychological pressure with financial and other incentives to turn victims into proxy recruiters and, eventually, traffickers. In part to avoid detection by authorities, traffickers pledge to release some victims -- and even reward them financially -- on condition that they return to their home countries and recruit one or more women to replace them.

"Happy" refers to recruiters' practice of pretending to have had an ideal experience in legitimate jobs in the West or elsewhere, hiding the fact that they'd been forced into prostitution themselves. International media first signaled the emergence of "happy trafficking" in the Balkans and Italy, but campaigners warn that it has become common practice in many parts of the world. In Europe, the converted recruiters are frequently former sex workers from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, or Balkan and Southeastern European states like Bulgaria and Romania.

Central Asia is also emerging as one of the hot spots where "happy traffickers" are active. One activist who works with trafficked women in Thailand told RFE/RL that large numbers of Central Asian women have been turned into sex workers in Bangkok.

The activist, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, singled out young Uzbek women as especially prevalent, perhaps due to broad unhappiness over poverty and dire social conditions at home. "I meet literally hundreds of women from Central Asia -- particularly from Uzbekistan -- on any night of the week," the activist said. "I haven't got any statistics, but I would probably estimate that at least a couple of thousand Uzbek women, if not more, are in Thailand as sex workers."

She said thousands of women from Uzbekistan are lured to Thailand by Uzbek recruiters known as "Mama-sans" -- former sex workers who have themselves become madams under the supervision of traffickers.

Reprisals are harsh against those who try to escape, so the prospect of release in exchange for recruiting new victims can be difficult to resist. Traffickers are keen to use the former sex workers as go-betweens because they are familiar with the business and, at the same time, provide criminal organizers a way to remain invisible to authorities.

Read the full article

CNN Special on UK Sex Trafficking

CNN Special on UK Sex Trafficking

This video report completely speaks for itself. The special looks into the sex industry in the UK and even posts a fake website that advertises sex with women that represent a large community of trafficking victims in the UK: young, Eastern European girls. The sex advertised is unprotected sex and it shows just how quickly responses come and how much money can be made.

The special also goes to Romania where this reporter is able to find areas of known sex trafficking rings, and is able to even get a price on the permanent sale of a young Romanian woman.

Joint UK/Romanian Operation Busts Romanian Child Trafficking Ring

From the BBC:

Police believe they have smashed a Romanian criminal gang smuggling children as young as five into the country to beg and steal.

Officers from several forces, including the Metropolitan Police, raided 17 addresses across the county. At least 25 adults were held, on suspicion of immigration breaches, deception, fraud, theft and pick-pocketing.

Police suspect poor families in eastern Europe may be forced into allowing gangs to take their children into the UK to carry out offences such as pick-pocketing and thefts near cash machines. They estimate that each child is worth £100,000 a year to the gangs and the Romanian authorities estimate there are up to 2,000 children who have been smuggled into Britain.

The human trafficking trade now generates an estimated £5bn a year worldwide, making it the second biggest international criminal industry after the drugs trade.

Figures from the Met showed that before Romania joined the EU, its nationals were associated with 146 crimes over six months in Britain. A year after it joined, the figure had leapt to 922 within the same period. Police believe about 70 people are behind the majority of the trafficking...

Karl Davis, from education and children services, told BBC News: "We carried out individual assessments on all these children and five children remain in our care."

"Five families have come forward and we are satisfied that the arguments made were sufficient and we were happy for them to return to their families. We assessed them fully in terms of what the children and families told us. Some of the families were in the homes that were raided but some traveled from outside of Slough."

"Some of the children were too young to tell us much. The youngest is two years old and there are two 14-year-olds. The two-year-old is still in our care."

The same article has an interview with Christine Beddoe of ECPAT, a global network of organizations working on eliminating child exploitation. She speaks a bit more to the areas the UK will need to improve on in order to help children suffering from exploitation.

According to Reuters, the operation was codenamed "Caddy" and Commander Steve Allen stated that more arrests are expected. Other articles seem to confuse trafficking with smuggling, and others yet call into question whether the children were actually unaware of what was happening. I'm sure the two-year-old gave consent for the family to sell him/her and then viciously hit the streets to steal. I apologize for the sarcasm, but child trafficking targets the most vulnerable group in society and even if or when the children are saved, they are faced with the lifelong burden of their experience. According to a 2005 article on Turkey's efforts to combat human trafficking, only 30 percent of victims of human trafficking recover to the point of leading a normal life. This is of course, the identified victims that organizations and governments are able to document. I can only hope the children who were returned to their families in Romania will not be sold again.

This article also details another cost of human trafficking that I think is striking as I tried to find other articles on the case and found many had some sort of condescending or doubtful tone to it.

"Another human cost of migrant smuggling is the damage that is done to the image of migrants, and an increase in xenophobia. Up until now, unmanaged migration flows in destination countries have resulted in a perception by the general public that migrants are to blame for the growth in organized crime. But migration is an issue that affects us all; it is and always has been a natural human phenomenon. That is why it cannot be left to criminals to manage migration for us."

Even the BBC was ready to point out how crimes by people of Romanian origin was quick to increase in the UK after Romania's accession to the EU so the article makes an important statement. Human trafficking is still not a phenomenon we completely understand and until we realize the extent of the damage it is doing, a complete solution will not be reached.