Global Issues

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Albania

• More than 30,000 Albanian prostitutes throughout Europe.

• Source country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor, including the forced begging of children.

• Albanian victims are subjected to conditions of forced labor and sex trafficking within Albania and Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Western Europe.

• Approximately half of the victims referred for care within the country in 2010 were Albanian women and girls subjected to sex trafficking in hotels and private residences in Tirana, Durres, and Vlora.

• As of 1998, Albanian mafia networks were trafficking hundreds of illegal immigrants for prostitution from Albania and the former Yugoslavia to England.

• Women from Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnian women and young girls were subjected to sex trafficking within the country.

• Prostitution, pimping and brothel ownership illegal.

• March 1, 2012. Albania’s parliament adopted prostitution law. Clients could receive penalties of up to three years in prison, pimps from five to 15 years and prostitutes up to three years.

• As of 2010, Greece main country of destination for trafficked women with Italy, Macedonia, and Kosovo also destinations. Many victims trafficked onward to Western Europe. Traffickers largely used overland routes or falsified documents to transport their victims by airplane or ferry.

• 8.2% of women in Albania report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 2.9% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

 

Advocacy

• The Association of Albanian Girls and Women is a nonprofit humanitarian organization created by and for victims of human trafficking in Albania.

•  Since 1997, Vera Lesko has risked danger to herself and her family to protect trafficking victims and prevent young women from falling prey to traffickers. In 2001, Ms. Lesko’s organization, The Hearth Psycho- Social Center, opened the first shelter in the country for trafficked Albanian women and girls.

• United Nations Women or UNIFEM working Albania to reduce poverty among women, end violence against women; reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls, and achieve gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war.

 

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data:  Surveys by  Country 2011; ABC News; The Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation, Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine Z. Mendelsohn, Vanessa Chirgwin, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, 1999; AFP; Worldwide Prostitution Guide website; UN Women; U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report 2011; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2009;