Sex Trade in Europe: Europe’s fight against trafficking in human beings, a new form of slavery - by Terry Davis
Europe may well have abolished slavery 200 years ago, but it has not yet been stamped out. Across Europe criminal gangs are getting rich through the trade in human beings—and many governments are not doing enough to stop it. Trafficking in human beings is not the most discreet form of crime. Its victims can be found every evening on the banks of a canal near the Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg, and in other cities in Georgia and across Europe. The heavy make-up does nothing to conceal their anguish and despair. Occasionally, they are rounded up by the police and deported to their countries of origin. In most cases, they will be forced back into slavery in some other corner of Europe before the ink of the signatures on their deportation orders has had time to dry. Regrettably, criminals always seem to be one step ahead. While the traffickers are getting rich, the trafficked are paying the price.
To put an end to this frustrating and shameful state of affairs, the Council of Europe produced a groundbreaking new Convention in 2005 to strengthen international co-operation, prevent trafficking, prosecute traffickers, help the victims and create a monitoring mechanism to ensure that governments comply with what they have signed. The Convention will enter into force on 1 February and have immediate legal effect in the first ten countries to ratify it: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Georgia, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, France and Norway, which have ratified it in January, it will enter into force on 1 May.
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