Speech by President of the Republic Tarja Halonen at the OSCE conference on human trafficking, Helsinki, 10 September 2008

Photo: Petri Krook

Every year, millions of women, children and men around the world fall victim to human trafficking. This present-day form of slavery knows no geographical borders; it affects every nation. Human trafficking is a serious criminal activity and a violation of human rights. We have promised to take every effort to prohibit it in all circumstances.

Human trafficking is also a threat to international security. The OSCE, as a regional security organization, is in an excellent position to combat this phenomenon. The participating states have made extensive commitments to fight human trafficking. In this work, we have a good tool for action: the OSCE Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, which was adopted in 2003. Furthermore, I am very pleased that Finland, as the current holder of the OSCE Chairmanship, and Greece, Kazakhstan and Lithuania, the future Chairmanship holders, as well as Spain, Finland’s predecessor, agreed to keep up this commitment last June in Helsinki.

We need even broader cooperation. And we have it. Also, the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Union have adopted commitments against human trafficking. The Council of Europe Convention applies to all forms of human trafficking regardless of whether it is national or international, or whether it is connected to organised crime. This agreement complements the UN Palermo Convention and its Protocol. And in the European Union, Article 5 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights explicitly prohibits trafficking in human beings. The Union has also adopted other provisions to fight this phenomenon.

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We do have a relatively good international foundation of agreements in support of our efforts. We must now turn the letter of the agreements to practical action. Active work against human trafficking demands a lot of financial as well as human resources. We need expertise in many fields, and a genuine will to cooperate both nationally and internationally, since the challenge ahead of us is huge.

The European Commission and the International Organization for Migration estimate that every year some 700,000 people fall victim to cross-border human trafficking, of which about 120,000 people end up in Western Europe. The European Police Office, Europol, estimates that about half a million illegal immigrants enter the EU every year and about half of them are smuggled in by organised crime networks. Even though estimates differ widely, we are clearly talking about a great number of people – and every human victim is unnecessary.

In conflict situations, there is a particular threat to the human and fundamental rights of civilians. We have bad experiences of this even within the OSCE area – previously in the Balkans and currently in Southern Caucasus.

Therefore, it is important to train personnel in civilian and military crisis management operations to recognize and intervene in human trafficking as well as to assist the victims without delay. The participation of women in operations often helps in getting contact with the victims. The OSCE can be proud of its long-standing policy of zero tolerance for human trafficking.

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Human rights offences, violence, discrimination, poverty, hunger and unemployment increase the risk of becoming a victim of human trafficking. And exactly for these reasons, unfortunately, there are so many women and children among them. According to estimates of the United States State Department – published in 2007 – as many as 80 per cent of the victims worldwide are women and girls. And half of all victims are underage. In addition, protecting minority groups, such as the Roma, from human trafficking requires special attention.

Some victims are actually kidnapped, but many leave their home countries voluntarily in good faith, hoping for a better future – and realise too late that they have become badly cheated. Others are somewhat aware of what may lie ahead – but choose to go anyway rather than staying at home in poor conditions.

Having arrived in their destination country, victims are forced to work for no wages or with very low income – and often face actual violence or threat of violence. In most cases, they do not speak the local language or know the local culture, and in the worst case have no identification documents. This leaves our fellow humans completely at the mercy of the human trafficking organisers.

In order to effectively combat trafficking, we must be able to recognise early the vulnerable groups and direct these people to get help from the existing services and support networks.

Awareness of one’s own position is a good starting point for activation. However, this is not enough. We must in general increase the public awareness of all kinds of forms of human trafficking. Many people may have witnessed this phenomenon without really understanding what was going on. We here in Finland, too, sincerely thought some years ago that human trafficking was not a problem in our country. We were wrong. There is no area too remote for international organised crime. Finland’s first National Action Plan against Trafficking in Human Beings was adopted in 2005 and revised in 2007.

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In addition to helping the victims and punishing the trafficking organisers, we must ask ourselves why human trafficking is still profitable. What creates the markets? A good example is paid sexual services. In order to restrict this demand, countries have used different means. For example, Sweden has criminalised the purchasing of sex from prostitutes. In Finland, legislation has been amended in 2006 so that buying sexual services is criminalised only in cases where the person in question is a victim of trafficking or under the age of 18.

In next few years, we should assess how well these legislative means have worked and what kind of further measures we need to act more effectively against human trafficking related to prostitution. As you all here know, the unfortunate trend is that the number of child victims in Europe is growing.

Work-related human trafficking must also be actively prevented and we must ensure that everyone’s right to decent work fulfils. We need to create a better framework for cross border movement of people in order to make it a truly positive force for people themselves and countries of origin and destination. International labour standards, and their effective enforcement by the authorities together with the labour market organisations, are means to prevent human trafficking.

OSCE Special Representative Eva Biaudet has underlined the importance of cooperation between countries of origin, transit and destination in combating trafficking. In addition, the work of non-governmental organisations complements the action of authorities. In practice, NGOs are often those who can get closest to the reality and everyday life of individuals.

I believe that the large number of people attending this conference confirms that the participating states of the OSCE are prepared to take a more active and determined approach to fight human trafficking – and to do that together with other international organizations. Gathering reliable data on this phenomenon is of key importance, and for that reason it is also crucial to support research in the field and to promote the use of research findings.

I wish you every success in your efforts to achieve a safer and more just world to all of us.