EU: Strategies to prevent trafficking in women and
children
Fuente: © European
Parliament /noticias.info/
- Trafficking in women and children is a growing world-wide problem which needs
to be tackled on a global, EU and national level. The European Parliament
adopted a report with 622 votes in favour, 12 against and 19 abstentions,
proposing strategies to tackle this dreadful problem, including measures to deal
with the supply and demand sides as well as the traffickers.
The report
calls on the Member States, especially Germany, to take appropriate measures in
the course of the World Cup football tournament in 2006 to prevent trafficking
of women and forced prostitution.
Women and children are particularly
vulnerable to this modern form of slavery. Of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000
men, women and children trafficked across international borders each year
approximately 80 percent are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors*.
Over 100,000 women are the victims of trafficking in the EU.
Successful
strategies are needed to deal with the main causes of trafficking. It is,
however, not possible to address the prevention of trafficking through
individual actions by each Member State, notes the European Parliament. Instead,
MEPs suggest a holistic and integrated multidisciplinary approach at the EU and
international level. The European Parliament also calls for research, at
national and European level, into the underlying causes, particularly of
trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation, i.e. what factors
place people at risk and what factors affect demand for sexual services and
sexual exploitation of women and children.
Prevention also means
examining the "triangle of trafficking": victim, trafficker and client. The
report suggests practical action, such as awareness raising campaigns to inform
of the dangers and educate the vulnerable members of society in the countries of
origin, to alert and sensitise the public about the problem and reduce demand in
the countries of destination. Another measure envisaged is national and
international telephone help-lines. MEPs also highlight the need to tackle the
tendency to use the Internet for sexual exploitation. .
The European
Parliament calls on the Member States to enforce the law and strengthen the
prosecution and punishment of traffickers, accomplices, persons seeking sexual
services from minors and to prosecute the laundering of the proceeds of
trafficking.
* According to the 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report by
the US Department of State office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons.
http://www.state.gov
/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2005/
: femm-press@europarl.eu.int