Croatia's Progress In Curbing Human Trafficking

Croatian govt. does not fully meet the minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking, but is investing significant efforts to do so.

The U.S. State Department has released the seventh annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” on Tuesday. It is a global overview of the efforts made by individual governments in the fight against the modern form of slavery that occurs almost everywhere in the world and to which millions of people, mostly women and minors, fall victim every year.  

As a transit country in human trafficking, in the report, Croatia is placed in the second category of countries in terms of the efforts invested in curbing the trafficking. The  progress it made in protecting the victims and preventing human trafficking has been pointed out. 

The report, which covers the period between April 2006 and March 2007, states that about 800,000 people fall victim to human trafficking across the borders each year and 80 percent of those are women and girls – the victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Up to 50 percent of the victims of human trafficking are minors. 

Apart from that, millions of women and men worldwide are becoming the victims of human trafficking inside national borders, mostly because of forced and indentured labour, writes the State Department, citing the estimates of the International Labor Organization (ILO) that mention about 12,3 million people in the world who are victims of forced labour, indentured labour, children’s forced labour or sexual and involuntary servitude.

The countries are divided into four categories based on whether they are the starting point, transit area, or destination of human trafficking, whether they meet the criteria of the U.S. law on the protection of human trafficking victims from the year 2000, and how involved their governments are in curbing the trafficking.   

In the last, fourth category, there are 16 countries where the conditions are the most critical. They include the U.S. Gulf allies: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman. The category includes countries that have poor or no relations at all with the U.S.: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela.   

As in recent years, Croatia was placed in the second category, along with all the countries of the former Yugoslavia, with the exception of Slovenia, and with European Union countries like Portugal, Greece, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Malta, Bulgaria and Romania. 

The report states that Croatia is a transit country, but also more frequently the starting point and the destination for the women and girls who are trafficked from Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and elsewhere from eastern Europe for the purpose of sexual exploitation. 

The government of the Republic of Croatia is said to be continuing the cooperation with nongovernmental organizations on identifying the victims of human trafficking, to whom they donated 100,000 dollars in 2006. The government is also intensifying the efforts in investigating and processing the criminal acts of human trafficking and expanding the training of the police and customs officers. 

Croatia is advised to process the cases of human trafficking more vigorously and punish the perpetrators in a more fitting fashion. The report mentions the statistics of the custom of mild punishment, usually a one year suspended prison sentence.  

The report emphasizes that Croatia offers shelter, legal, medical and psychological help to victims of human trafficking and makes it possible for them to stay in the country for two years if they are faced with difficulties and exile when they return to their homeland. 

The State Department also points out the prevention measures that Croatia is taking to curb the trafficking as well as the campaign to raise public awareness of the problem with television advertisements, including posters in the Macedonian, Ukrainian and Romanian language next to highways, on border crossings, in sea harbours, at airports and in police stations.