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Новини
01 червня 2010
75 TRAFFICKED CHILDREN RECEIVE ASSISTANCE THROUGH A EUROPEAN UNION-FUNDED PROJECT
As Ukraine celebrates the Child Protection Day, 75 children – former victims of trafficking - are being assisted by the project “Strengthening National Mechanisms and Capacities for Elimination of Trafficking in Children in Ukraine”, a two-year initiative launched on 1 June 2009, with financial support from the European Union. The project is implemented by the Chernivtsi-based NGO Suchasnyk in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission in Ukraine and aims to assist the Government of Ukraine in its efforts to implement the State Programme against Human Trafficking and the UN Convention on Protection the Rights of the Child.
The assisted children, the majority of them girls, became victims of trafficking between the ages of four and 17. Many are orphans, children deprived of parental custody, or come from underprivileged families. Forced to work, beg or provide sexual services, one fourth of the children were exploited in Ukraine, while the Russian Federation was the country of destination for more than half of them. Based on their individual needs, children receive medical, psychological, educational, legal, financial and other assistance, guided by the overall purpose of reinstating them in their rights, protecting them from re-trafficking, and helping them find a vision for their future after the traumatizing experience of human trafficking.
“The number of children identified as victims of trafficking within a single year since the start of the project shows that we are moving in the right direction,” – says Ms. Elvira Mruchkovska, Head of the NGO Suchasnyk. “Before the start of our work, we found that 80% of practitioners were unaware of the ways to identify and refer a child for support.” Today, one third of children – victims of trafficking referred for assistance to IOM and its partner NGOs are identified by employees of juvenile transit facilities and services for children’s affairs, many of whom received their first training on countering child trafficking in the framework of the project. “This, among other things, signifies the improved Government response to this problem”, - suggests Ms. Mruchkovska.
Despite the first success of the initiative, its implementers admit that they may have only been able to touch upon the tip of the iceberg and that there is a long way ahead before Ukraine is fully capable to protect its children against the scourge of human trafficking. “The magnitude of child trafficking from, to and within Ukraine is unknown due to the very latent nature of this crime,” – says Mr. Manfred Profazi, Chief of the IOM Mission in Ukraine. “Having studied all these stories of trafficked children, the stories of dysfunctional families, neglect, exploitation and indifference, we understood the particular vulnerability of children to trafficking. We realized that prevention efforts do not necessarily reach the most vulnerable of them and that we have to ensure that support is available where prevention fails. And this is the message that we want to send to the Ukrainian society on the Child Protection Day.”
The project “Strengthening National Mechanisms and Capacities for Elimination of Trafficking in Children in Ukraine” is implemented in five pilot Regions of Ukraine (Chernivtsi, Zakarpattia, Mykolayiv, Kharkiv, and Luhansk) in the framework of the European Commission’s Thematic Programme "Investing in People". By launching this programme the EU recognizes that the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified convention and there is (almost) universal acceptance that protection of children’s rights should be central to any development process.
IOM’s Counter-Trafficking Programme was launched in 1998 to support government and civil society efforts to combat trafficking in human beings from, to and within Ukraine. Since 2000, IOM in cooperation with its partner NGOs around Ukraine identified and assisted over 6,500 victims of trafficking, among them 345 children.
If you have additional questions, please, contact Svitlana Slabinska (+38 044 568 50 15, +38 050 904 22 61, sslabinska@iom.int). |