Municipality of Venice and OSCE sign agreement to deepen tried and tested anti-trafficking partnership

VENICE, 12 April 2018 - The Commissioner of the Municipality of Venice, Mr. Simone Venturini, and the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Madina Jarbussynova, signed an agreement today strengthening co-operation between the OSCE and the Municipality of Venice regarding victim protection and the fight against organized criminal networks involved in trafficking.

“We place great value on our partnership with the OSCE and are honoured to be able to place the skills of our experts at the disposal of all 57 OSCE participating States,” said Mr. Venturini. “We are confident that this reinforced co-operation with the OSCE Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings will bring positive results.”

The signing ceremony took place shortly before the conference Trafficking of Human Beings from a Human Rights Perspective, organized by the Department for Equal Opportunities of Italy and the Municipality of Venice in co-operation with the OSCE. The one-day event gathered over 200 national and international experts to discuss means of improving multi-stakeholder approaches to combating trafficking.

“The long-standing co-operation between the OSCE and the Municipality of Venice, based on shared values regarding the protection of human rights, has already proven instrumental in ensuring the success of three OSCE-led simulation-based training exercises on combating human trafficking along migration routes at the Centre of Excellence for Stability Police Units in Vicenza over the course of 2016 and 2017,” said Jarbussynova. “We look forward to closer co-operation with the Municipality of Venice and to more of the same practical and results-oriented work which our partnership has demonstrated that it can deliver.” 
 
“Our partnership to date has helped to train  over 200 financial investigators, criminal investigators, labour inspectors, prosecutors, NGONGO
non-governmental organization workers, social services providers, lawyers, cultural mediators and journalists in methodological, technical and practical issues related to anti-trafficking action,” stated Alberto Andreani, manager of the project OSCE Combating Human Trafficking Along Migration Routes. 

The simulations addressed trafficking vulnerabilities facing individuals in large mixed-migration flows triggered by ongoing conflicts, general instability and a lack of economic opportunity in neighbouring regions. Along with the OSCE and the Municipality of Venice, a number of other partners have also contributed to the project’s implementation, including UNHCR, INTERPOL, EUROPOL, ICMPD, the Department of Human Rights of the University of Padua and a number of relevant NGOs. 

In addition to these three international live-simulation exercises, in January 2018, thanks to the support of the 2018 Italian OSCE Chairmanship and the Department of Equal Opportunities of Italy, a national simulation in the Italian language was implemented to improve Italian anti-trafficking action.