Why has human trafficking reached epidemic proportions worldwide over the past decade?
The issue of trafficking in human beings emerged as a global problem in the late 1980s, as a reaction to the political changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. There is no single, specific cause. In every affected country, economic, social and political factors play roles. Moreover, there is a supply side the trafficked victims as well as a demand side, including traffickers, violent employers and sexual exploiters. There are several reasons why people become victims. The causes are intermeshed and tend to reinforce one another, including poverty, lack of education, lack of awareness, hope for a better future in the west and so on. And we should not forget that it is a similar sense of desperation that drives many of the traffickers into this awful business. Last year, the United Nation s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published a report called Trafficking in persons . This document ranks Albania very high as origin and transit country. Well, our official numbers for 2
