On its 20th anniversary the NGO Luludi concluded its public awareness campaign “Get informed! Anyone can become a victim of trafficking” targeting Roma girls and high school students in North Macedonia. The final conference to mark the closing of this campaign gathered many representatives from NGOs, high schools, anti-trafficking institutions and embassies who were acknowledged with the results of the campaign and discussed the Analysis on the high school students’ perceptions regarding the phenomenon of human trafficking including key recommendations on how to make prevention and protection of children against trafficking more effective.
“Preventing and combating trafficking in children requires reporting of each and every risk of child trafficking to the competent anti-trafficking institutions” – says Svetlana VLAHOVIC, Deputy National Coordinator for trafficking in human beings. “Our anti-trafficking efforts will not be futile even if only one child is saved from the traffickers”-she adds.
The Coordinator of the public awareness campaign, young Ines DJEMAIL briefed the participants about the steps taken to implement the public awareness campaign and its achievements. In total 23 workshops with the participation of more than 400 high school students with Roma, Macedonian and Albanian ethnic affiliations were delivered in order to sensitise the youth about child trafficking, not only as a crime, but also as an outrage upon personal dignity. Fifty-one students were involved in the production of 5 creative short videos to raise awareness of their peers about child trafficking.
The public awareness campaign was conducted through Social Media channels and the national television in Romany and Macedonian languages. The materials from the campaign are available at Luludi Preventing child trafficking online platform.
This campaign is part of the efforts to ensure compliance with the application of the recommendations set out in the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. The initiative was implemented by NGO Luludi which was awarded with a grant under the action “Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking in North Macedonia””, part of the European Union and Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey II”, aiming 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.