Anti begging campaign to curb child trafficking
20 August 2008 - A campaign against child trafficking and forced begging is underway in Kosovo launched by Terre des hommes together with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Titled "begging handicaps my future", the campaign aims to raise awareness on how paying child beggars feeds children's exploitation and trafficking, and to put an end to the trend.
"The public needs to be aware of the rights of children. We conducted a survey of 600 individuals in various towns in Kosovo and 80 per cent of them admitted they give money to begging children," says Artur Marku, Head of Mission of the Swiss organization in Kosovo. "People mean well but they are in fact propagating a vicious cycle of exploitation."
The children who beg are neither orphans or abandoned. On the contrary, many of them are encouraged into the activity by their own parents or tutors. As long as they earn money, they are sent back on the streets.
"These children do not benefit directly from the money; they give it to their parents or persons who organize the begging. The children come predominantly from the minority Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities but Albanian children are out there too. The largest presence of children is in Pristina region," says Marku.
Through television, radio and print, the campaign will run through the month of August. Billboards and posters have been posted in Kosovo's main towns, while information leaflets are widely disseminated to the public.
Artan Duraku, a political advisor in Kosovo's Interior Ministry, says there are many underlying causes to the problem: "poverty may be one of them. That's exactly why our Ministry is conducting an action plan to stop human trafficking. Child trafficking has not been treated as a crime or a form of organized crime until now," he explains; something he hopes will be rectified in the new strategy.
Since 2005, in close collaboration with local authorities, Terre des hommes has been working on a project to protect children as well as prevent and advocate against child exploitation and trafficking. The organization has identified and assisted 400 children exploited as beggars.