Omerovic: Serbia stepping up fight against human trafficking

BELGRADE - Serbia has undertaken numerous activities aimed at stepping up the fight against human trafficking, the chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Human and Minority Rights and Gender Equality Meho Omerovic said on Thursday during a meeting with a state delegation of Kazakhstan.

Omerovic stressed that a meeting such as this is of exceptional significance for experience-sharing in setting up and implementing a state mechanism for dealing with victims of human trafficking, the Serbian parliament said in a statement.

The delegation of the Serbian parliamentary committee and the state delegation of Kazakhstan shared experiences in implementing criminal legislation and concluded that both countries are facing the same problem of insufficient implementation of laws in practice.

Serbia is primarily a country of origin of human trafficking victims, and, to a lesser extent, a destination and transit country, Omerovic said.

The Serbian government has established a council and a national team for fighting human trafficking, with a national coordinator appointed for the same purpose and a centre established for protection of human trafficking victims, Omerovic said.

The 2006 amendments to the Serbian penal code separated the crime of human trafficking from the crime of illegal crossing of a state border and human smuggling, also introducing tougher sentences for human trafficking and an extended list of forms of exploitation, establishing relationships of slavery and transporting persons in relationships of slavery, he noted.

The first report by the Council of Europe's Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) on the implementation of the Council's Convention on Action against...