EU Resolution on Trafficking Calls for Unconditional Aid to Victims
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: February 8, 2010
WUNRN
European
Parliament Resolution of 10 February 2010
on
Preventing Trafficking in Human Beings
______________________________________________________________
Press Release
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION ON
HUMAN TRAFFICKING
CALLS FOR UNCONDITIONAL AID TO
VICTIMS
Justice
and Home Affairs – 10-02-2010
Victims of human trafficking, especially women and children,
should receive protection and “unconditional” assistance, demanded
the EP in a resolution adopted on Wednesday. The victims should be entitled to
free legal aid, the penalties for traffickers should be rethought and ways must
be found to discourage demand for services supplied by the victims, say MEPs.
The fight against trafficking in human beings must stay high on the EU
agenda during times of economic and financial crisis, stresses the resolution.
According to Europol’s assessment for 2009, trafficking of women for sexual
exploitation has not decreased and trafficking for forced labour is increasing.
Trafficking takes many forms. It is linked to sexual exploitation, forced
labour, the illegal trade in human organs, begging, illegal adoptions and
domestic work. Of the identified victims of trafficking, 79% are women and
girls.
Further EU action in this field should focus on the protection of victims,
say MEPs, by ensuring that assistance to victims is “unconditional”, that a
victim’s consent to exploitation is always deemed irrelevant and that victims
are entitled to assistance irrespective of their willingness to cooperate in
criminal proceedings.
According to the EP, victims should receive all possible help from the
moment they are identified as such, including access to at least a temporary
residence permit, irrespective of their willingness to cooperate in criminal
proceedings, and simplified access to the labour market, including the
provision of training and other forms of upskilling. The EP also asks for a
simplified family reunification policy for victims, particularly where this is
required for their protection, access to appropriate secure accommodation,
including the provision of a food/subsistence allowance, to emergency medical
treatment, to counselling services, translation and interpretation where
appropriate, help contacting family and friends, and access to education for
children.
Free legal aid should also be given to the victims, which “is essential to
enable them to escape the situation of coercion in which they find themselves,
bearing in mind that they lack financial means and would thus be unable to pay
for such assistance”.
Further prevention and action could also focus on the users of services
supplied by trafficked people. MEPs call for massive awareness-raising
campaigns targeting both potential victims of trafficking and potential buyers
of services from trafficked persons.
The EP calls on Frontex and national border-control agencies, in the course
of their activities, to define common practices in order to raise staff
awareness of the issue of trafficking and to identify victims of trafficking
and ensure their protection.
The Treaty of Lisbon strengthens EU action in the field of judicial and
police cooperation in criminal matters, including in combating trafficking in
human beings, and Parliament, as co-legislator, will have a full role to play
here.
The resolution by the groups S&D, ALDE, Greens/ALE and GUE/NGL was
adopted by a show of hands.
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