Albania, Cyprus, Montenegro on US human trafficking watch list

05/06/2008

Croatia and Macedonia are the only Balkan countries whose governments fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, according to a new US State Department report.

(RFE/RL - 05/06/08; Makfax, Balkan Insight, US Department of State - 04/06/08)

[US State Department]

Increased efforts to combat human trafficking in 2007 have allowed Croatia and Macedonia to join the world's best performers in this area, according to a new report released on Wednesday (June 4th).

The US State Department's eighth annual "Trafficking in Persons" report placed the two Balkan countries in a group with 27 other nations considered to be fully complying with the minimum standards for the elimination of that practice, or Tier 1.

Of the remaining 170 nations covered in the nearly 300-page paper, 153 belong in one of the other three categories -- Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List, or Tier 3. Seventeen other countries, including Kosovo, are considered special cases for lack of sufficient information and remain unranked.

Six of the Southeast European (SEE) countries -- Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey -- fell within the 71-nation Tier 2. This is the group of countries that do not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance.

Cyprus made the Tier 2 Watch List for the third year in a row. Albania and Montenegro, which ranked as Tier 2 countries last year, are now among the 41 nations on the US trafficking watch list.

Cyprus again found itself in this group due to the government's failure to demonstrate that it has stepped up efforts to combat human trafficking, the report said. "Although it passed a new trafficking law and opened a government trafficking shelter, these efforts are outweighed by its failure to show tangible and critically needed progress in the areas of law enforcement, victim protection and the prevention of trafficking.

Albania and Montenegro also failed to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking in persons, according to the State Department.

"The [Albanian] government did not appropriately identify trafficking victims during 2007," the report said. "It also has not demonstrated that it is vigorously investigating or prosecuting complicit officials."

The State Department found that public attention to the issue of trafficking has diminished significantly in Montenegro over the past few years. "According to NGOs and international observers, official statistics under report the incidence of trafficking, and authorities need to focus more attention on the problem."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters Wednesday that there was "much greater global awareness about the brutality of human trafficking" now than in 2000, when the State Department issued its first report.

"Globally, human trafficking is a multidimensional threat: it deprives people of their human rights and dignity," she said. "It increases global health risks. It bankrolls the growth of organised crime, and it undermines the rule of law."