Lorena Arocha - Roma people and trafficking discourses – the tale of two cities

The Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings entered into force on 1 February 2008. The added value of this new piece of international legislation lies in its human-rights, victim-centred approach and how it obliges Member States to provide assistance and support to all those who have been trafficked. The Czech Republic has not signed the Convention yet, but Poland ratified it in November 2008. It came into force in Poland in May 2009.

Roma people, one of the most mobile groups in Europe, have had a long history of discrimination and ostracism. Many have been left with no citizenship and almost always living in ghettoes and in dire economic circumstances. They are known to be particularly vulnerable to trafficking in human beings. Only recently, statutory and non-statutory agencies across the continent are placing more attention on understanding these vulnerabilities so as to develop social schemes and programmes that can deliver successful assistance to Roma people who may have been victims of trafficking. For example, the European Roma Rights Centre and the People in Need Slovakia are conducting a research project funded by the European Commission in five different Eastern and Central European countries in order to improve our knowledge of how the Roma community is affected by trafficking.

There are known cases of Roma people being trafficked into Poland and the Czech Republic, and Roma people being trafficked from the Czech Republic further afield to countries such as Spain, the United Kingdom and France. In Poland, the greatest number of non-Polish citizens identified as victims of trafficking for any form of exploitation are from the Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania. Of these last two countries, the great majority of them are of Roma background. Although most have looked into the trafficking of young people and women for sexual exploitation, only recently attention is being paid to trafficking for forced labour, benefit fraud and criminal activity across Europe.

During the two day investigation I would speak to NGOs working with Roma people and on trafficking in both, the Czech Republic and Poland. I will be contacting NGOs in both of these locations to examine the extent of Roma inward and outward migration, their socio-economic circumstances and issues of integration and identity, as well as how trafficking discourses may be impacting on Roma migration and integration. I would also examine whether the implementation of the Convention since May 2009 has delivered the assistance and protection it recommends in the Polish context and how this differs from the Czech Republic context, which has not signed the Convention but has greater numbers of Roma population and whose government has formulated anti-trafficking policies since 2003, the year in which the National Rapporteur for Trafficking in Human Beings was established.