Laws Not Enough...

The CRIN put out an article on Greece's current situation in the protection and rights of those sexually trafficked and exploited.

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[13 June 2007] - Despite the enormous scale of trafficking of women and girls for forced prostitution in Greece, the government has failed to guarantee them protection and justice, said Amnesty International in a new report.

Many women and girls are denied protection in Greece because help is conditional upon them agreeing to testify against their traffickers, which they are often too terrified to do - meaning their traffickers escape justice. Thousands more are never identified as trafficked, are simply treated as 'illegals' and are even deported.

Trafficking for forced prostitution in Greece is believed to have increased tenfold from 1990 to 1997. According to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in 2000 alone, up to 90,000 people are believed to have been trafficked into Greece from central and eastern Europe, a large number of whom were women trafficked for prostitution.

The new Amnesty International report, 'Greece: Uphold the rights of women and girls trafficked for sexual exploitation', looks at the scale of trafficking into Greece for forced prostitution, and points to gaps in Greek law and practice on trafficking that undermine the efforts to help trafficked women and girls.

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To read the rest of the article which includes a case study of a woman seeking justice and protection, go HERE.

This is all too often the case. Many girls seeking to get out of prostitution are fearful of the ramifications of such decisions. Governmental laws are not sufficient enough to protect these women from those who seek to bring them back into CSET. Greece has implemented some new laws - which are not helping - and this is the case in many areas of the world.

The House of Representatives meet every couple of years to discuss the current situation and actions being taken. I was quite frustrated when reading through the notes taken at these meetings - although good things were said and suggested, we still have difficulty implementing any of the laws or suggestions that are made. In reading the report from 2002 and then the report from 2005 - very little changed and the ramifications that were set forth for those who did not implement such laws were not carried out.
The 2002 report said:
"The Trafficking Victims Protection Act contemplates that the United States will withdraw non-humanitarian aid from governments which remain on the ''Tier Three'' list after the next year's report. The ''Tier Three'' governments are those that not only fail to meet minimum international standards for combating human trafficking, but who are not even making serious efforts to bring themselves into compliance with these standards."
I have not heard of anything such thing being done...
To understand the tiers and see what little has been done to the effect of implementing change based on this standard check out the 2005 report pg.'s 37-39.

You can check out the minutes from both committee meetings here: 2002 and 2005