Project: „Programme for the Enhancement of Anti-trafficking Responses in South Eastern Europe”

Leading partner: International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD)

Timeframe: 2007 – 2008

The Programme aims at strengthening the institutional capacity of each participating country, contributing to the harmonization and improved quality and reliability of data related to trafficking in human beings in SEE countries in the areas of prevention, protection and prosecution (victim-centered database and legal and judicial database). Outputs of the project: regional criteria for a uniform data system, handbook on regional criteria available in six languages; programming and technical implementation of the two databases and their institutionalization in each of the concerned countries.

Under The Programme for the Enhancement of Anti-Trafficking Responses in South Eastern Europe – Data Collection and Information Management implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in ten countries in South Eastern Europe, in the beginning of 2008 the NCCTHB received a computer configuration with a database of victims of human trafficking installed. The information collected about the victims will be used by the NCCTHB to analyse the trends in the recruitment, transport, period of exploitation, process of identification and provision of assistance and protection to the victim of trafficking. The analyses of the database will also help fine-tune the messages targeted at the risk groups in the prevention campaigns in Bulgaria. An NCCTHB expert has attended special training on the work with the database in Vienna, Austria.

The information about the cases of trafficking in the database will be collected through a questionnaire specially developed by the NCCTHB. The questionnaire will be filled in by all institutions and organisations which work with victims of human trafficking on an every-day basis or are likely to do so. The individual elements of the questionnaire and the procedure for its distribution and filling-in were the special topic at two of the meetings of the Standing Working Group with the NCCTHB. The database contains five sections with more than 50 indicators concerning a case of trafficking which can be used at a later stage for cross analysis.

The sections in the database are:

1. Personal information;

2. Recruitment;

3. Transport;

4. Period of exploitation;

5. Identification and assistance.

The Supreme Cassation Prosecution Office of the Republic of Bulgaria has received an analogous computer configuration with an installed database concerning traffickers.