We’d like to feature a new project happening in Romania and across Europe.
Their focus is on the trafficking of minors in Romania.
The partnership between Reaching Out (Romania), Fier Fryslân (Netherlands), Nest International (Denmark), National Guard Squad (Netherlands) and Freedom House Romania plan to start implementation of the project Action against trafficking minors. Increasing the efficiency of EU and EEA police forces by implementing EU directives and norms in the field focused on developing a manual of protocols for dealing with minors who are victims of human trafficking. The project benefits from the financial support from the DAPHNE Programme of the European Commission, DG Justice.
The purpose of the project is to create a manual of protocols to be used by police officers and social workers across the EU as a reference and guide of best practices in dealing with the under aged victims of international human traffickers, in particular minors who have been the victims of forced prostitution in the EU and EEA. The project is built on the idea that police treatment of victims can be improved if EU norms and policies in the field are implemented. The European Commission’s 2011/36/EU directive highlights many issues in the field and should be the basis of procedural and protocol reform. In order to contribute to the implementation of the directive’s norms and practices, we plan to carry out a series of research and training activities, strongly focused on gathering feedback from police officers in order to develop easy to implement protocols which will be included in an international manual, to be disseminated at an EU and EEA wide level with the help of Europol and other central European institutions.
The project will be implemented in partnership with civil society organisations from our two EU and EEA partner states, the Netherlands and Denmark.We have chosen Romania, the Netherlands and Denmark as our target countries due to their special relevance to trafficking of girls and young women. Romania is Europe’s number one source of illegal forced and unforced sex workers, while the Netherlands and Denmark are two of the main destination countries for these sex workers, one from the EU and the other from the EEA.
Furthermore, the three countries have significantly different legal and police systems. Therefore, the applicability of the manual will be EU-wide and its roots will have to be EU policies and norms in the field. This will allow the manual to contribute to a unification of practices across the EU. – content from the Project Website