More than 39,000 cases of human trafficking were recorded in Europe in the last two decades, according to data from the International Organization for Migration.
Our country is no exception. The non-governmental sector presents worrying data, more than 90 percent of victims of human trafficking in our country are minors.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2024, 37 victims of human trafficking were registered, of which 25 were minors. According to data from the Lara Foundation from Bijeljina, the dominant forms of exploitation are begging, labor exploitation and sexual exploitation.
“Those numbers of identified potential victims of human trafficking in the last 4.5 years are between 30 and 4. What is indicative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also for the region, is that children are predominantly victims, for the purpose of begging, forced marriages, underage marriages and forced into criminal activities. Women were trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, men for the purpose of labor exploitation,” said Dragana Petrić from the Lara Bijeljina Foundation.
The non-governmental sector appeals that anyone can report suspected human trafficking, and that failure to report is also a criminal offense.
Anyone can report suspected human trafficking to the police or the center for social work. If the Center for Social Work is contacted, they then contact the police, who then contact the health institutions and the competent prosecutor, so that the victim, if necessary and if it is found to be necessary, is placed further in a safe house, where a guardian is assigned to her if she is a minor.
“The number of children is growing, as well as the need to raise awareness of this fact in some way, for the entire public to shed light on this fact, that if you notice a child repeatedly in a neglected and neglected state, with injuries, lost, unaccompanied by an adult, to report it and request the intervention of the competent institutions”, said Mirsada Poturković from the Cantonal Center for Social Work Sarajevo.
The safe house in Bijeljina is one of four in our country where victims of human trafficking are accommodated. Last year there were 15 of them.
“The main role when he comes to a safe house is to stabilize, to calm down, to have the feeling that he is in a safe and secure place. It is very worrying that in the last period we have an increasing number of children in safe houses who are victims of potential human trafficking and they are exclusively unaccompanied by their parents, which says something about how widespread this form of violence is,” said Milka Stević, coordinator of the Safe House in Bijeljina.
International organizations estimate that around 27.6 million people in the world are victims of human trafficking. Most of the victims are forced to work, beg or other forms of abuse, and women and girls make up more than 70 percent of them, it says. BHRT.
