• Human trafficking
  • Sexually Exploited and Trafficked Young People
  • Trafficking and Domestic Violence Legal Project
• EU free movement and discrimination
• Invisible migrants
• Migrants in London
• Western Balkans Rule of Law
• Domestic Violence
• European Cross Border Criminal Justice

Partnership Action Against Trafficking in South-East Europe

Human trafficking is a grave human rights violation as well as a global crime.  When victims are identified, there is almost always a cross-border element to their story.

The AIRE Centre, with support from the European Commission, has joined forces with three other NGOs: ASTRA in Serbia, the Centre for Legal Civic Initiatives in Albania and Open Gate La Strada in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.  In the context of EuropeAid's "Fight against Corruption, Organised Crime and Trafficking", we have started this small network to improve compliance with international standards in these three countries which are potential candidates for EU accession. 

In 2000, the United Nations introduced the Supplementary Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (the Palermo Protocol) to the Convention on Transnational Organised Crime.  In 2005, the Council of Europe introduced the Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings.  Further legislative measures have been introduced at EU level as well.  The aim of the project is to monitor States' compliance with the applicable European standards that exist to protect the rights of victims of human trafficking.

"Partnership Action Against Trafficking in South Eastern Europe" was an eighteen month project, started in January 2010, with the objective of improving the protection of trafficking victims in Europe.  The AIRE Centre, with our overseas partners, looked at the extent to which compliance with European standards in the field of human trafficking in these countries, and in particular the systems for identifying victims of trafficking and providing them with protection, comply with the European legal framework.  These results, along with any recommendations on better compliance, were published in the project publication which is being distributed to legislators, government actors, NGOs and lawyers in the countries concerned and at European level.

This project has successfully developed a tool - this specifically designed questionnaire - to measure States' compliance with the Trafficking Convention in individual cases. It provides an opportunity for those working with victims of human trafficking to fill out the questionnaire based on interviews with the individual as well as supporting documentation relating to the case in question.