New publication “CHILDREN SPEAK OUT: Trafficking Risk and Resilience in Southeast Europe-Albania Report”
September 2007. SCiA presented its new publication “CHILDREN SPEAK OUT: Trafficking Risk and Resilience in Southeast Europe-Albania Report”. This research project was designed to help us better understand the risks and the factors that make some children more vulnerable to trafficking than others.
It was conducted, from May 2006 to June 2007, in the framework of “Child Trafficking Response Programme in Southeast Europe” (CTRP), in seven countries/entities of southeastern Europe (i.e. Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and the UN Administered Province of Kosovo). The goal of CTRP is to reduce the vulnerability of children at risk of being trafficked through interventions focused mainly on prevention.
The objectives of this research were to clarify and help to better understand the processes and mechanisms by which children are trafficked and exploited, including children’s views on these phenomena, and to increase the knowledge about the strengths and protection mechanisms that exist among children, their families and community as well as what interventions should be made by the state and the civil society in order to ensure the necessary protection to “most at-risk” children.
The innovation introduced by this research report is the fact that it is not focused on the trafficking extent and forms, but it studies the child trafficking from the children’s point of view, the circumstances in which these children grow up and their level of inclusion in the decision-making process. The study also deepens in the possible and effective directions and interventions for prevention and protection of children from trafficking.
“They (the traffickers) are crafty, as the fox. They see that the parents are in a difficult economic condition and ask them their child or their girl, promising to buy them a house and to send them money, so the parents are beguiled and consign them their children”. 13 year-old boy.
The Albania national research report includes the views of most “at-risk” children’s groups from two communities/areas of Albania, as well as those of adults such as parents, teachers, social workers and the key actors in charge of children’s welfare and protection. The research is a qualitative one and it is based on child-centered methodologies and, for this reason, the field researchers have had to spend a lot of time in both communities where these children live.
“I felt very well because I understood that I am able since somebody asks for my opinion” 13 year-old boy
The report reveals the important role of the family and the family circle in the trafficking process and it raises issues concerning the definition of trafficking and migration and, above all, on child exploitation. The research brings to light the deep knowledge children have in understanding the processes they are involved in and their will to consider themselves responsible members of the family, in spite of the difficulties such thing can bring them.