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SERBIA: ASTRA TRAFFICKING CAMPAIGN - NAKED FACTS

 

Women are not meat. Children are not slaves. People are not a commodity.

 

 

NAKED FACTS is the fifth anti-trafficking campaign which NGO ASTRA has conducted since the beginning of its work. The campaign seeks to remind both general public and government authorities that human trafficking problem is still present in our country, the fact often forgotten in a society increasingly tolerant to violence and human rights violation.

 

During six years of work, from March 2002 until March 2008, ASTRA SOS Hotline received more than 7,500 calls. Only in previous two years, we received more than 3,500 calls, the majority of whom was directly linked to human trafficking, i.e. to providing assistance to human trafficking survivors during the phase of emergency protection and care and later, throughout the process of recovery and reintegration.

 

So far, ASTRA has worked with 264 trafficking victims, mostly females,  of whom 40% were children, i.e. persons younger than 18. All of them were provided with assistance during longer or shorter periods of time, both through field actions and within ASTRA Daily Center, which, as reintegration program intended primarily to trafficking survivors who do not live in the shelter, was launched in January 2007.

 

Serbia is the country of origin, transit and destination, i.e. exploitation of trafficking victims, very often all at the same time. Namely, internal trafficking has been on the rise, the kind of trafficking in which victims are sold from one town to another, without crossing the state border. Sexual exploitation is still a dominating form of exploitation in Serbia, but we must not neglect child trafficking for forced begging and trafficking in men for labor exploitation.

 

NAKED FACTS, on ASTRA’s and their own behalf, are presented by Jugoslav Ćosić, Milutin Petrović, Ivan Tasovac, Dejan Anastasijević, Željko Bodrožić, Branislav Lečić and Vukašin Marković.  They have been chosen as men who possess strong professional and personal integrity and who are known for insisting on the truth.

 

Campaign NAKED FACTS is supported by OSCE Mission to Serbia and  ADA – Austrian Development Cooperation.

 

ASTRA

Tel: +381 11 26 35 114

SOS hotline/fax: +381 11 33 47 817

Web site: www.astra.org.rs





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