Romania Reports Decline in Human Trafficking

Some 876 cases of human trafficking were officially reported in Romania last year, which was down on the figure for 2012 but showed that the problem persists, officials say.

“The number of human victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labour or beggary purposes is continuously decreasing and last year was 38 per cent less compared to 2012,” Romulus Ungureanu, chief of the national agency on human trafficking, ANITP, said on Thursday.

"Despite the decrease, these figures are still cause for concern," Ungureanu added.

Experts say human trafficking in Romania remains a problem partly because the poor general social and economic situation are conducive to all sorts of crimes.

Most victims of human trafficking were women, or girls, and a high proportion were sexually exploited. Last year, 557 cases of exploited women (278 of whom were underage) were reported, official data shows.

Most human trafficking victims were people with a low level of education, aged between 18 and 36 in the case of women, and between 22 and 28 in the case of men.

Spain and Italy remain the favourite destinations for traffickers, but high number of victims were reported in Greece and Germany also.

Romania remains the EU country with the highest number of victims of human trafficking. A recent report from the EU statistics organisation, Eurostat, quoted by Deutsche Welle, said 61 per cent of identified victims of human trafficking in Europe came from EU member states.

Most cases investigated between 2009 and 2013 by the EU law enforcement agency Europol involved Europeans: 40 per cent were from Romania, 18 per cent were from Hungary and 11 per cent from Bulgaria.