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"Addressing the demand"

Child pickpockets, "lover boys" and trafficking routes: the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combatting Trafficking in Human Beings Eva Biaudet in an interview with eurotopics editor Nikola Richter.

euro|topics: Ms. Biaudet, trafficking concerns all European countries. Are there particular trafficking patterns or routes?

One pattern is that children are trafficked into the big cities of Western Europe to beg on the streets, as pick-pockets or for the sex business.

Eva Biaudet was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1961. In October 2006 she was appointed OSCE Special Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings. She lives in Vienna.

Photo: OSCE

If you look at Europe, the sex business is bigger than labour trafficking in comparison with Asia and India, where there is a large internal slavery market.

euro|topics: Do the traffickers work differently depending on where their victims come from?

A recent study by the UK government on children at risk found that girls from Africa often believed that their traffickers had rescued them – from poverty, from living on the streets, from exploitation. They were not very willing to reveal anything about their traffickers to the police. Children, mostly girls from Eastern Europe, had been coerced in very violent ways: through rape, gang-rape and threats. They were only prepared to help if you protected them. Asian victims generally feel ashamed if they are found out, as they are heavily indebted and burdened with a mission to help their family at home. Our information is fragmentary and the picture is changing all the time.

euro|topics: In what way does the trafficking of women differ from from trafficking of men?

According to IOM studies of the CIS, women and children victims often had a background of wanting to escape domestic violence or abuse, while men had plans to migrate that were similar to normal patterns of migration. The last Netherlands report of 2006 – a number of countries, among them the Netherlands, Sweden, Rumania and the US, produce these reports – identified the phenomenon of "lover boys,” where there is a strong emotional relationship between the trafficking victim and the trafficker. In Europe, trafficking in sex dominates but we are also finding out more and more about trafficking in labour. Women and girls form the majority of both groups.

euro|topics: Have the trafficking patterns changed since the enlargement of the EU?

The countries of origin are now within the EU and have freedom of movement. Thus, trafficking also takes place within the EU – from Lithuania to the UK and the Scandinavian countries, from Rumania and Bulgaria to Germany or Italy. Many countries have put into place a system of protection for asylum seekers or irregular migrants from outside the EU, but not for migrants within the EU.

euro|topics: Aren't the victims less dependent if they can move freely?

Checking the victim's papers is not the only way of controlling. In one case young Lithuanian girls were not aware of their right to travel without a passport. Often the violence is so bad that they cannot leave even with a passport in their hands. Migrants from Nigeria are controlled by Voodoo. Local Juju-men tell the girls that they will fall ill or go crazy if they do not obey.

euro|topics: You work with different European governments: Which countries have a good approach and are interested in addressing the issue?

Italy has very advanced systems of unconditional protection for victims, the Dutch are working hard and have a very good reporting mechanism in place and in Sweden the government has reported a radical decrease in trafficking numbers due to a new legislative approach of criminalising people who buy sex. Prostitution is not prohibited and prostitutes are not criminalised – instead those who buy sex are criminalised. The UN Palermo protocol, the Council of Europe Convention and the OSCE Action Plan all say that you have to address the demand to eradicate trafficking in human beings. Without exploitation there are no markets for traffickers.

euro|topics: Where is the biggest sex trafficking market in Europe?

The Western European countries are the main countries of destination but there is also internal human trafficking. In many cases people are first trafficked internally before being trafficked abroad. Not a single country is spared.

euro|topics: How does the police or a buyer know that a victim has been trafficked?

It does not say it on your forehead. But if you buy sex, you can be at great risk of supporting trafficking. Exploitation is easier if you think the person you are exploiting is different to you: "from another country, needs money, is used to it.” People in vulnerable situations are easily exploited.

euro|topics: If we look at the annual profits made from exploitation of all trafficked forced labour, most of the money, 15.5 million dollars, goes to the industrialised economies – according to the US State Report from June 2008. So what are the most urgent measures that European countries should take?

One important short term OSCE goal is to set up national rapporteurs to gather data and analyse information. We say: responsibility to act lies with governments. This is a concern of all countries: countries of origin and of destination, but also the countries of transit.

euro|topics: The already existing information puts the number of trafficked human beings, for instance, at between 600,000 and 2,5 million worldwide, depending on what source you use.

Exactly. You should not only look at internationally reported numbers if you do not have reliable numbers on the country level. You need to look at the general picture: on trials and convictions, children in orphanages, women in shelters, people in asylum centres etc. And the police need to work internationally with other police forces in order to identify the constantly changing patterns of this international crime.

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