​CHILD TRAFFICKING STATISTICS IN MOLDOVA GOES UP

The number of cases of child trafficking is growing in Moldova, said Eduard Bulat, head of the Prosecutor General’s Office department on combating human trafficking, during Tuesday’s regional conference “10th anniversary of the Council of Europe Convention on Combating Human Trafficking: results and perspectives in Eastern Europe countries (Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus)”.

According to him, 19 cases were started on this issue year to date, while a year earlier this number was of 11. This shows that the prosecution system achieved a certain success in fighting corruption, but the problem remains.

Minister of Labor, Social Protection and Family Mircea Buga said that the national system of providing shelter and help to victims and potential victims of human trafficking is actively working in Moldova.

“In 2014, 80 victims of trafficking, namely 51 women, 18 men and 11 children received help. Neither can we ignore other organizations: the Center for providing help and protection to victims and potential victims of human trafficking offered assistance to 414 people over the last year”, he said.

Head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) mission to Moldova Antonio Polosa said that their organization intends to raise the potential of country’s Government in fighting human trafficking and helped to create Center for protecting victims of this phenomenon.

Councilor of Norwegian Embassy to Moldova German Baskar said that his country supports Moldova in different projects on combating human trafficking, including financial projects.

“Analyzing the phenomenon of human trafficking, it was found out that this almost does not exist in countries, where the police and the justice system are working well, where criminal individuals cannot buy protection and impunity”, he said.