KOSOVO: a campaign to make people more aware of the trafficking of children

Summary: Active in the country since 2000, Terre des hommes aims to protect the children against trafficking in all its forms, through actions for awareness-making similar to the campaign named “Open your eyes, be aware!” The main objective is to make the general public more conscious of the evil that is eating away at Kosovan society. The Tdh teams in the field carried out a series of interviews to assess the public’s knowledge of this subject before the campaign starts, so as to be able to measure the impact on public opinion.

Increasing public awareness of the evil eating away at society

The campaign, jointly financed by Tdh, the European Union and the United Nations, ran from 18th September until 18th October 2012. Televised commercials were broadcast in a continuous loop on the screens with positive messages from three local stars, judoka Maijilinda Kelmendi , singer Hana Cakuli and film actor Fatmir Spahiu . In addition to these televised, radio and web messages, there were posters up in many of the country’s towns, and many people concerned with the issue took part in debates and conferences on the trafficking of children.

The main objective of the campaign was to make the Kosovars more conscious of the exploitation of children by giving them information on forced labour, forced begging and sexual exploitation, as well as promoting the resources available to victims or future victims. So as to assess the Kosovars’ knowledge of trafficking and also to be able to measure the impact of the campaign, Tdh ran two lots of interviews with a representative sample of 665 people between August and October 2012 in Prishtina, Prizren, Peja, Gjakova, Gjilan, Ferizaj and Mitrovica. In general, the talks held prior to the “Open your eyes, be aware!” campaign showed that the Kosovan people are worried by the scourge. Over half the people questioned knew about the problems linked to child trafficking. The principle factors mentioned were poverty and organized crime. However, the interviews hardly tackled the matter of sexual exploitation, as this subject is still considered taboo in Kosovo. Finally, the great majority of people questioned considered the Kosovan national police to be the most important force in the fight against trafficking.

A campaign with an impact

The second batch of interviews was done in the days following the national campaign. It showed that it had had a relatively positive impact on the Kosovan people’s knowledge of child trafficking. The number of people who know the subject matter very well increased by 11% between the two surveys. The main success of the campaign seems to be having placed sexual exploitation in the centre of the debate. In fact, 37% of the people interviewed after the campaign considered that it was the most important form of child trafficking in Kosovo, whereas this figure was only 18% before the campaign.

The surveys highlighted other essential elements to explain how child trafficking is perceived in Kosovo. 63% of the people questioned felt there was a difference between trafficking organized by traffickers and that organized by the parents themselves. Whilst the first was a symbol of criminal activities, the second were rather connected to poverty. At a level of being the privileged agents to dam the trafficking, the police remain by and large the popular choice. Lastly, on the question of the best legal means to judge the people responsible for child trafficking, more than half those interviewed replied with ‘capital punishment’, although this was in fact abolished in 2002.

Actions of this type are in keeping with the daily work of Tdh. In the field, the teams set up systems to protect children from all forms of trafficking, through training courses and strengthening the skills of the people concerned with them, such as police officials, social workers and members of the Roma community. Campaigns for awareness-making are also carried out for parents in disadvantaged communities, as well as activities to help the children to become better integrated in their community and to go back to school.