OSCE highlights human rights approach to preventing and combating human trafficking in Washington

The Deputy Co-ordinator of the Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Ruth Freedom Pojman, addressed the Global Stakes in Human Rights Roundtable on “The OSCE, Human Rights, and Human Trafficking” at the Council on Foreign Relations, on 27 March 2012 in Washington DC.

Pojman said that since 2000 the OSCE has been promoting a human-rights approach to human trafficking, advocating for a victim-centered focus, and strengthening co-operation between governments and civil society, which has proved vital to both effective protection of victims and successful prosecutions.

She stressed that the OSCE’s Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, a mechanism  set up by the 56 OSCE participating States to assist them in implementing the commitments they have adopted, is a unique high-level political position, fully resourced with an expert staff. This allows the Special Representative, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, to engage states in a high-level political dialogue to address all forms of human trafficking on a co-operative basis throughout the OSCE region.

She noted that the Special Representative also hosts the Alliance against Trafficking in Persons, a forum initiated by the OSCE in 2004 that brings together all relevant international organizations as well as regional non-governmental organizations to develop joint strategies to improve international co-operation, and to investigate and prosecute this crime, which is both a human rights violation and a transnational threat for security.