A Meeting with Astra - Anti-trafficking Action in Serbia

Last week I had a meeting with Astra, which I was really excited about.  And having had it, I'm even more excited!  I'd been having some difficulties in finding reliable information on either the facts about human trafficking in Serbia, or what is being done to counteract it.  I couldn't have struck more lucky than by reaching out to Astra.

Astra is a local grassroots NGO dedicated to the eradication of all forms of trafficking in human beings.  Established just at the end of the Milosevic era in 2000 by Tamara Vukasovic, who still heads up the organisation, and a colleague, it was founded in a situation where there was no mechanism of support for the victims.

I sat down with Tamara and three of her colleagues on Friday, and she ran me through the history of both recent human trafficking and the legal framework in Serbia.  Here's a short summary:

Two members of the fabulous team at Astra

The Evolution of Human Trafficking in Serbia since 2000

The disintegration of Yugoslavia led to a protracted and bloody conflict.  A lesser known side-effect was the creation of a large number of bars and brothels in Serbia, which were frequented by many of those involve in the fighting.  This was instrumental in the rise of sex trafficking.  Serbia was, at this point, predominantly a country of transit and destination, with women most commonly being brought in from Moldova (as well as Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine) and, when travelling onwards from Serbia, heading to Western Europe, especially Northern Italy, France, Germany and Sweden.  The stereotype that most girls trafficked to Western Europe at the start of the century were Russian is in fact false; many more came from ex-Soviet republics.  There appears to have been little internal trafficking within Serbia, though at the time the law did not recognise such practices as trafficking.

The law also did not recognise trafficking for reasons of forced labour.  During the early 2000s sexual exploitation was much more common, but there was also some labour exploitation.  This was most common for construction workers in Russia, who generally had terrible working conditions and no pay.

In 2001 Dindic became Prime Minister, and Serbia became much more open to NGOs. Increased international attention to the problem of sex trafficking, so considerable support was received from other European countries.  However, there was a deep and pervasive distrust of NGOs within Serbia, some of which still survives today.

The Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe should be particular credited with helping to get things moving within Serbia.  Helga Konrad was the major anti-trafficking coordinator, and initiated almost all Western Europe activities against trafficking, as well as pressurizing the Balkan governments, particularly in Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia.

By 2004-5, however, the phenomenon of human trafficking was clearly shifting.  There were fewer foreign victims and more domestic internally exploited individuals, as well as a larger proportion of children.  Up to 45% of victims were children, of which 90% were girls.  There was also a rise in labour exploitation.  The battle to have that acknowledged as trafficking continues to this day.

Tamara disabused me of a number of misperceptions about trafficking.  Forced abduction is, in fact, not common.  The abduction rate may be as low as 5%.  Job offers, or marriage and relationship offers are much more common.  Individuals leave their families to pursue what they are led to believe will be a better life.  The reality is often very different.

In some ways the development of the legal system in Serbia has been impressive.  The National Referral Mechanism, which aims to create a central body responsive for identification of victims, as well as to work on preventative measures through education (Astra has been working with them on this, and has an accredited program within the educational system) has been used as an international model (see here).

Until 2003 there was no legal framework in Serbia, but 2003 saw a raft of measures being past, and laws were then updated in 2006 and 2009.  Internal trafficking is now fully recognised as human trafficking, and the legal framework is generally perceived as strong.  Implementation has been more of a problem, however, as we shall see more later.  The 2009 law established a National Action Plan for dealing with trafficking, which expired in 2011.  Although there are plans to renew it, the process of doing so has been frustratingly slow.  A draft plan can be seen here.

Challenges related to working on Human Trafficking

I asked Tamara what the biggest challenges for the organisation were.  She's clearly a hugely capable, energetic, and inspiring woman, but the environment in which they operate is - equally obviously - very challenging.

Trafficking is a very dynamic phenomenon.Priorities and paths for any organization can shift quickly, so they need to be reactive and adaptable.  The problem, of course, is that many donors are not flexible.  They have strategic plans set years in advance, and global agendas that don’t give much wiggle room to be tailored to local situations.

One example is internet recruiting; this has become more and more of a common phenomenon, and Astra have been aiming to start initiatives in this area for some time, but they needed 4 years to find a donor agency prepared to support them.  Astra, as an on the ground agency, can really be tuned in to local issues in a way that global agencies cannot.  The world needs more of that.  Too often donors come with ideas and therefore don’t engage in sufficient grassroots discussions.  There are therefore lots of overlapping projects and badly-targeted programs.

An additional problem is that many UN agencies related to women do not work in the Balkans.  This means that most initiatives are very small scale.

Data continues to be very problematic.  The number of Serbians trafficked overseas is probably underestimated by a considerable margin; most victims go to countries with large Serbian migrant populations, such as Austria and Germany, and can be very difficult to identify.

In terms of the nuts and bolts of fighting human trafficking, this is clearly an intensely complex problem.  Some of the issues that Tamara mentioned (though it was clear that she could have chosen a number of others) were:

• The porous nature of today's European borders.  Serbia has a visa agreement with the Schengen area, which means that Serbians can travel visa free.  This means, in turn, that would-be traffickers need only for a girl to have a passport.  Train tickets to Vienna can then be bought for as little as 20 Euros.  In this situation it is very difficult to locate trafficking victims.
• Political considerations can lead to the state not taking serious action against other states (or even opening negotiations) where there are identified cases of trafficking.  Thousands of Serbian workers were exploited in Azerbaijan, for example, but the Serbian government is not even willing to open that case.
• Funds allocated for human trafficking sometimes end up elsewhere (here she was talking internationally I think, rather than specifically about Serbia).  Money can often be funnelled into anti-immigration organizations (under the guise of cutting trafficking), or can end up being used to prosecute poverty, or vulnerable groups such as the Roma.
• Dealing with victims of trafficking must be combined with preventative work.  A large portion of women come from violent families, and have experienced sexual abuse as children.  It is therefore the case that they are sometimes trying to find a means of escape, and end up in the hands of traffickers.  Sexual violence is a real problem in Serbia; 27 women were killed in the first half of 2015.  Femicide is common.  This is a big part of the problem with trafficking, as is the unemployment crisis, as well as the feminization of poverty (with women having suffered disproportionately from the closure of factories since the collapse of Yugoslavia, etc).  A large part of fighting human trafficking will tackling these issues.
  
  

The current priorities for Astra moving forward

Astra is engaged in a really impressive number of different projects.  Two core operations, however, are two phones lines they run: an SOS hotline for trafficking victims and those connected to them, and the European Missing Children Number.  In the latter case Astra is the Serbian link in an international system, and acts as a coordinator between the different parties (policy locally and internationally, parents, etc).  These hotlines clearly provide a very valuable service, and they also function as important data sources.  A lot of the data that Astra uses comes from their hotline (de-identified of course!), which they compare with data from the police, from social welfare centers, etc to confirm trends. 

There are two issues that Astra are really pushing at the moment.  First, they are really focussed on getting more compensation for victims of trafficking.  The 2003 legislation made provisions for compensation for the victims from the traffickers, but there has so far only been 1 case in which this has happen, and even that case was in the courts for 7 years before compensation was finally awarded.  Astra is currently doing a lot of court case analysis on this topic, and campaigning for a compensation fund from the government.

Secondly, in relation to their missing child hotline, they are looking to achieve an Amber Alert system in Serbia, which would enable prompt action when children are missing.  The Wikipedia page on Amber alerts is quite useful for an introduction to these hugely useful measures.

I left Astra hugely inspired by the work these women are doing, and even more firmly convinced that more needs to be done at all levels to tackle this issue.  Finding better ways to coordinate - and to bring examples of best practice like Astra to the attention of others who might be able to emulate core parts of the model - will be absolutely key.

Thank you Astra for meeting with me (and for all the great books you gave me!), and I hope we'll work together in the future.

Many apologies if there are any factual errors in the above - they are my own.