Albania’s children still vulnerable to human trafficking

Each year hundreds of Albanian children are trafficked to Greece for forced begging, forced work and forced prostitution. A UNICEF report on the lives of Albanian children has concluded that poverty, discrimination and a lack of care for street children has fuelled the problem. The report “The state of Albania’s children 2006, excluded and invisible.” Claims that children’s “exclusion in Albania is a result of poverty, migration, weak governance, slow decentralization, insufficient policies and inadequate implementation of laws.”
“Their rights to survive, develop, participate and be protected are being neglected. …Social policies that adequately address the needs of children and ensure a protective environment are virtually absent.”
An estimated 280,000 of Albania’s 1.2 million children exist on less than US$2 a day. The worst affected are Albania’s Roma minority whose children receive an average of only 4 years schooling as opposed to 9.5 years for the population as a whole. With this kind of isolation, exclusion and poverty, it is not surprising that, despite a recent agreement between the Greek and Albanian governments for the repatriation of trafficked children, there still a huge problem.