OSCE calls for co-ordinated fight against trafficking in human beings

VIENNA, 12 July 2001 (OSCE) - In a bid to improve the fight against trafficking in human beings, the OSCE Permanent Council today urged its international partner organizations to adopt similar anti-trafficking rules to those contained in OSCE guidelines adopted last month.

The representatives of the 55 OSCE participating States requested the Organization's Chairman-in-Office, its Secretary General and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to disseminate the OSCE's Anti-Trafficking Guidelines and its Code of Conduct for OSCE personnel to partner organizations. The Permanent Council also asked the OSCE to encourage other organizations to adopt similar instruments for their own personnel, and to invite them to exchange information on their own best practices and anti-trafficking regulations.

"Trafficking in human beings is one of the most pressing and complex issues in the OSCE region", said the Chairman-in-Office, Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana. "Every year, hundreds of thousands of women, children and men are trafficked to or from OSCE states into conditions amounting to slavery. Despite efforts to combat trafficking in human beings, the phenomenon is flourishing and expanding throughout the OSCE region, and cuts across all dimensions of the Organization's work."

"By developing a set of Anti-Trafficking Guidelines and a Code of Conduct for its field personnel, the OSCE wishes to demonstrate that it takes the fight against trafficking in human beings seriously, including within its own structures", said Gerard Stoudmann, the Director of ODIHR, the OSCE's main institution dealing with the fight against trafficking. "The OSCE has set a positive example which we encourage other organizations to follow."

According to the OSCE Guidelines, trafficking is:

• a human dimension issue of major proportions, because trafficking victims are being stripped of their fundamental rights;
• through transnational organized crime, it affects the politico-military dimension of security; and
• an element of the economic dimension, since it largely exists because of economic and social inequalities between, and within, countries.

The OSCE's Guidelines point out that one of the most significant limitations in current law and policy is the failure to treat trafficking as a serious human rights issue. But through its Ministerial Council Decision and work in the Stability Pact Task Force, the OSCE is committed to a human rights based approach in the combat of trafficking.

Moreover, the Charter for European Security, adopted at the OSCE Summit in November 1999 in Istanbul, commits all OSCE participants to "undertake measures to eliminate all forms of trafficking in human beings". A year later, the Vienna Ministerial Council meeting in October 2000 strengthened the Organization's activities in this field.

The OSCE Anti-Trafficking Guidelines and its Code of Conduct are intended to ensure that all OSCE personnel, institutions, and field operations recognize the problem of trafficking in human beings, and undertake appropriate action.

The OSCE has already begun to engage in a number of activities to combat trafficking and assist victims, including in the fields of law enforcement, public awareness, research, training, and support for non-governmental organisations. Several of the OSCE 21 missions have undertaken anti-trafficking initiatives in various fields. The ODIHR has also launched a number of projects and chairs the Task Force on Trafficking in Human Beings, under the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe.

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For further information, please contact Josue Anselmo, OSCE Spokesperson, mobile (+43) 664 325 3698, or the Press and Public Information Section of the OSCE Secretariat, tel.: (+ 43-1) 514 36 180, or e-mail: info@osce.org