The US State Department released its 2022 Trafficking in Persons report on Thursday, which includes estimates for about 190 countries around the world.
The report divides countries into three levels. The first level includes countries and territories whose governments fully comply with the required minimum standards. The second tier includes countries and territories whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to achieve this, and the third tier includes countries that do not fully comply with the minimum standards and do not they are making efforts for such a thing.
Kosovo, together with Albania, continues to be ranked in the second level.
According to the report, the government of Kosovo did not fully meet the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking, but is making significant efforts to do so.
The government demonstrated an increase in overall efforts compared to a year earlier, taking into account the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, on its anti-trafficking capacities. For this reason, Kosovo continued to remain at Level 2.
Among the efforts were the prosecution of more defendants and the sentencing of a greater number of traffickers.
The government created guidelines for health workers to identify potential victims and translated pamphlets into Ukrainian and Russian that inform victims of their rights and available services.
Anti-trafficking coordinating bodies met continuously and the government drafted and approved the National Anti-Trafficking Strategy for the period 2022-2026.
“However, the government did not meet minimum standards in several key areas. Judges continued to hand down lenient sentences to the majority of convicted traffickers, which were below the minimum sentence provided by the trafficking law. The criminal code classifies the forcing of children by their parents to beg on the streets as parental neglect or abuse rather than trafficking and, due to inadequate procedures for identifying cases of forced begging, the authorities are likely to have deported inappropriately some unidentified victims of trafficking without referring them to appropriate services," the report states.
According to the report, the government reduced funding for NGO-run shelters and hotline operators lacked the training to understand and respond to calls related to trafficking, especially for possible cases of forced child begging.
Albania
According to the 2023 report, the government of Albania did not fully meet the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking, but is making significant efforts to do so.
The government demonstrated an increase in overall efforts compared to a year earlier, taking into account the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, on its anti-trafficking capacities. For this reason, Albania continued to remain at Level 2.
Among the efforts was the investigation of more suspected traffickers and the adoption of new procedures to identify victims of trafficking in irregular migration flows.
The State Department mentions the creation of four centers that offer psycho-social support, legal assistance and family assistance, as well as the signing of cooperation agreements with higher education institutions to expand legal assistance to victims.
“However, the government did not meet minimum standards in several key areas. The government did not convict any traffickers and identified fewer victims. The government continued to inconsistently implement screening procedures for vulnerable populations – particularly migrants, asylum seekers, Roma and Balkan-Egyptian communities and children – and mobile victim identification units continued to be underfunded and understaffed,” the report said. .
The government also lacked resources for efforts to reintegrate victims, anti-trafficking coordinating bodies did not hold meetings, and the telephone line made available by the government continued to not work. /VoA/
