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FULL REPORT IS ATTACHED.

 

Human Rights in Belgium: Trafficking in Human Beings (2007-2008)

Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l is releasing its new report on Human Rights in Belgium/ Trafficking in Human Beings covering 2007-2008. See the table of contents of the report and the recommendations.

This report scrutinizing the legal framework of the fight against trafficking in human beings and its implementation in practice is largely inspired the preliminary findings made by Frédéric Loore and Jean-Yves Tistaert in their book “Belgique en sous-sol. Immigration, traite et crime organisé”.[1][1]

 

In an introduction to the main part of their book, Loore and Tistaert characterize the Belgian system as one that looks good on paper, but does not work in practice due to various shortcomings.

 

To put it in the authors’ words: “[these criminal] networks take shelter behind legal umbrellas and exploit the preventive and repressive systems put in place by the Belgian authorities. The multiplicity of state organs charged with leading the fight [against human trafficking and human smuggling], the lack of coordination between them, the shortage of conceptual analysis of these phenomena and of their way of functioning, the scarcity of publications and public broadcasts to spread the knowledge on the subject; the administrative burdens, the chronic lack of means, the lacunae in the legislation, or the restrictive application in practice thereof, and sometimes also corruption and conflicts of interests, are windfalls that are equally being exploited by organized crime networks.”[2][2]

 

Concrete examples collected in 2007 and 2008 by Human Rights Without Frontiers confirm this analysis.







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[1][1] F. Loore, J-Y Tistaert, Belgique en sous-sol. Immigration, traite et crime organisé. Brussels: Éditions Racine, 2007. Frédéric Loore is an independent journalist who has written for a wide variety of high quality Belgian and French newspapers and weeklies. He is also one of the authors of the book  “Uranium appauvri. La guerre invisible” published in 2001 by Robert Laffont. Jean-Yves Tistaert has worked for over ten years in the Brussels Region as a social inspector specialized in issues of foreign labor linked to immigration from non-EU countries and was at the time of writing the book the head of an investigative Task Force of a municipal administrative police.  

[2][2] F. Loore, J-Y Tistaert, Belgique en sous-sol. Immigration, traite et crime organisé. Brussels: Éditions Racine, 2007, p. 14.

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