Galery

1

According to the US State Department’s annual report Greece is both a transit point and a destination, as well as, in certain cases, a source country of women and children who become victims of human trafficking and forced labour.

These findings are similar to the ones in last year’s report and Greece’s tier placement in it remains unchanged (It is part of the Tier 2 category of countries).

The report states that many women from Eastern Europe (including Lithuania, Latvia and Georgia), Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, China and several African countries become victims of human trafficking in Greece. Mostly children and men from Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, India, Moldova, Pakistan, Romania and Poland fall victim to forced labour there.

The report emphasises that according to the police and a number of NGOs there has been an increase in the number of Roma children from Albania, Bulgaria and Romania who have become victims of forced labour in Greece, after being coerced by their relatives into selling goods on the roads, begging in the streets or getting involved in petty theft.

In addition, the report points out that the women are trafficked into Greece by way of the islands in the Aegean sea and the Greek and Turkish border regional unit of Evros. They are subsequently subjected to trafficking in Athens and other major Greek cities. The same applies for the women who are transported through Greece for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labour in Italy and other EU countries.

The report also notes that the Greek authorities have identified two Greek citizens who have become victims of human trafficking, as well as a number of asylum seekers from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan who have been exploited by the traffickers. It has to be taken into account that numerous restaurants, night clubs, yacht chartering companies and other small businesses are used for money laundering.

The Greek government doesn’t cooperate fully

The authors of the US State Department report claim that, among other things, “the Greek government doesn’t entirely meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking”. However, they underline the fact that “it puts considerable effort into implementing the human trafficking prevention action plan”.

Despite the critical remarks, the report admits that ”the Greek government has begun applying stricter measures” against traffickers and that, as an improvement on the findings from the previous report, it has introduced more efficient practices for acknowledging human trafficking victims and has passed a new law for establishing the position of National coordinator for human trafficking.

It mentions that the Greek authorities made more arrests of traffickers in 2013 and are taking significant steps towards further educating police officers and members of the justice system on trafficking-related problems.

Recommendations

The report contains the usual set of recommendations for each country, including Greece, aimed at tackling the issue of human trafficking and exploitation, namely more efficient training of law enforcement officers, better tracking of asylum seekers' migration, providing legal representation for the victims of trafficking, reinforcing the prosecution and conviction of the perpetrators of trafficking-related criminal acts, including that of government officials involved in human trafficking.

Additionally, the report mentions the cooperation between different NGOs in investigating and solving cases of human trafficking, as well as their contribution to providing shelter for the victims.

Furthermore, while it doesn’t fail to mention certain suspicious incidents and investigations of police corruption, it also points out the Greek police’s successful local operations, their contribution to transnational cooperation plans for fighting human trafficking, and their involvement in trafficking investigations in Romania, Albania, Spain, the United States and Bulgaria.

The report cites a particular police investigation as a result of which the Greek authorities managed to save 18 trafficking victims from coercion into forced labour by a major international trafficking ring.

It concludes that Greece’s government is making consistent efforts to protect trafficking victims and that it has granted the same number of residence permits to foreign victims as last year. Moreover, it underscores the government’s continuous attempts at raising awareness of the issue.