A full day meeting gathered representatives of the line Ministries (Interior, Welfare, Foreign Affairs, and Health), Ombudsman’s Office, State Police, State Border Guard, Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, Social Integration State Agency, and NGOs – Centre MARTA, “Free Vidzeme from Human Trafficking” and “Shelter “Safe House””. Main gaps, challenges and needs to identify victims of human trafficking, to provide rehabilitation and reintegration assistance with a particular focus on transnational cases of human trafficking were flagged out and summarized.
The Latvian Presidency in the Council of the Baltic Sea States 2018 - 2019 under its priority “Integrity & Societal Security” underlines the need to continue the work on development of a regional Transnational Referral Mechanism (TRM) and to build capacity of local actors, initiated by Swedish CBSS Presidency.
The HOF-BSR Project contains an ambitious objective to maximize the effectiveness and unify practical cooperation among experts involved in the fight against human trafficking by developing a Transnational Referral Mechanism (TRM) in the Baltic Sea Region. It is important that the transfer of a victim from one assistance system to another should be made as smooth as possible in order to avoid repetition, parallel work and to make sure that there is at least one entity that is tracking the referral of the victim. In order to further strengthen the cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region in the fight against trafficking in human beings.
The HOF-BSR Project is implemented by the Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings (TF-THB) which since its establishment is recognized and acknowledged as a significant player on a macro regional level and has proved that this partnership is highly successful when seeking to establish long-term networks, initiate policy changes and shed light on new areas of human trafficking at national and international level.
The project is being carried out with financial support from the Swedish Institute and the Government Offices of Sweden. #HOFBSR #SIfunded
