The majority of the human trafficking victims in Serbia are children, mostly girls. According to the official statistics of the Centre for Human Trafficking Victims’ Protection, 102 child victims of trafficking were formally identified in the period 2017-2020, which is 50% of the total number of identified victims.

To contribute to the country efforts to prevent and combat child trafficking, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development has established with the support of the action “Preventing and combating trafficking in human beings in Serbia“ a multi-sector Working group for the revision of the existing indicators for preliminary identification of children at risk of trafficking by education professionals.

The Working group is composed of key anti-trafficking stakeholders from the Ministries of the Interior, Education, Health, Social affairs, as well as representatives of school management, pedagogists and anti-trafficking civil society organisations.

The second meeting of the Working group was organised in Vrdnik from 1 to 3 June 2021, with the participation of the State Secretary Ana-Marija Vicek, who highlighted that the enhancement of education professionals’ capacity to detect and assist potential child victims of trafficking can be done only if coherent and specific indicators were available and training courses on their usage were provided.

Based on national statistic, trends and illustrative examples, the participants in the Working group discussed concrete cases, weaknesses in procedures, school responsibility in detecting and referring potential child victims of trafficking, co-operation with public institutions, police and civil society organisations. The goal of the Working group is to provide clear and operative revised indicators for the education system.

The action on „Preventing and combating trafficking in human beings in Serbia“ is part of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”.