Southeastern European Nations Unite to Battle Sex Trafficking

According to the International Organization for Migration, 200,000 women are trafficked through Southeastern Europe each year. In response to this tragic crime rate, the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative in Bucharest has conducted three regional sweeps against human traffic rings. The Initiative, which opened in 2001 with American assistance, recently helped arrest five offenders in a ring that took women from Romania to Spain. Its other accomplishments include a June sweep that identified close to 600 victims and over 500 traffickers. The Center has facilitated an unprecedented level of transnational cooperation that has seen investigators, prosecutors, and victims crossing national boundaries to combat trafficking rings. The Center has been so successful with its approach, says this article in the New York Times, that another US-sponsored group is working on replicating it for an area that stretches from Southeastern Europe to Central Asia. – YaleGlobal