The members of Steering Committee responsible for the implementation of the EU and Council of Europe joint action on “Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking in North Macedonia”, held their meeting to evaluate achievements made in the period of 2019-2022 and to discuss activities to be implemented under the forthcoming third phase 2023-2027.
Since May 2016, the Government of North Macedonia, the Council of Europe and the European Union work together to strengthen the capacities to prevent and combat human trafficking and to protect the rights of victims, in line with European standards. The action’s draws on the recommendations from the Council of Europe Group of Experts against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) in respect to North Macedonia.
The members of the Steering Committee expressed their satisfaction with the achievements of the action and agreed on the need to build on these achievements to achieve further results. The action contributed to strengthen the knowledge and skills of different anti-trafficking actors to enable them to identify victims of trafficking for all forms of exploitation, to assist and protect them, to ensure effective access to justice for victims, to enable effective investigations, and to secure convictions of traffickers. More then 2500 professionals from the criminal justice sector, law enforcement agencies, labour inspections, education, health and social institutions, media and NGOs received training on different aspects of the antitrafficking work.
Future activities will continue build on existing measures, strengthening coherence of the anti-trafficking framework and increasing the effectiveness of prevention and victims’ protection measures. The action will continue to strengthen the interaction and co-ordination with wider range of actors, including the private sector, trade unions and survivors of human trafficking.
The Action on “Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking in North Macedonia” is implemented in the framework of the European Union and Council of Europe joint programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey II”, aims at assisting beneficiaries in South-East Europe to comply with the Council of Europe standards and European Union acquis in the framework of the enlargement process.
