Acting Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs and European Integration Minister Aureliu Ciocoi today chaired, in a videoconference format, a meeting of the national committee on combating the trafficking of human beings.

The participants in the meeting presented and approved the report on the implementation of the policy in the field of combating and preventing the trafficking of human beings in 2020. The report contains an analysis of the present tendencies as to the trafficking phenomenon, as well as a detailed description of the measures undertaken by the authorities on all dimensions of the anti-trafficking fight: prevention, protection, punishment, partnership.  

Aureliu Ciocoi stressed the need to maintain efforts, in order to ensure an efficient coordination of the activities of preventing and combating the trafficking of human beings nationally. Also, the Moldovan diplomacy head thanked the foreign partners for the further support of the anti-trafficking policies from Moldova and welcomed the launch, in early 2021, of the project, Contribution to a consolidated response of the law-enforcement bodies and of elaboration of the policies as to the trafficking of people in Moldova. The project is financed by the U.S. Department of State and implemented by the International Organization for Migration, in partnership with Moldova’s government.

The Committee members stressed that a 50-per cent diminution in the number of victims of the trafficking of human beings was recorded in Moldova for 2020 (139 people against 341 in 2019), against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, experts found out that this fact did not show a positive evolution, but rather a diminution of the capacity of identification, in the context of the impediments and effects triggered by the sanitary situation.  

In the context, acting PM Aureliu Ciocoi said that the efforts must be strengthened and the working instruments and processes should be adapted, in order to cope with the new circumstances, as well as the new tendencies and forms of the trafficking in human beings, which are present and more often switch to the online environment, and which become more and more difficult to be identified.

At the same time, the participants in the Committee’s meeting presented also a draft of a new action plan for 2021-2022 for implementing the national strategy for the prevention and combating of the trafficking in human beings, which is to be subjected to the procedure of approval by the government.

For his part, the state secretary, Gheorghe Leucă, stressed the importance of focusing efforts to fully carrying out the measures planned and implement the recommendations received through the international mechanisms of monitoring, such as the group of experts on the fight against the trafficking of human beings and the ones stipulated in USA’s annual report on human traffic.   

In the end, the competent authorities unveiled information on the institutional priorities for 2021.