View Back Home with a Broken Heart, a short film about the victims of trafficking and the help they receive from IOM.
- Young women and children who have been trafficked
- Young women, including single mothers, and children at risk of being trafficked
- Survivors of trafficking are returned home safely and given medical, psychological and legal help.
- The people most likely to be trafficked, primarily young women and children, are assisted in vocational skills training, finishing school or college, standing a small business, or finding a job to give them alternatives to accepting work abroad.
- Victims of trafficking or their families can call a toll-free hotline for help, while potential migrants can call the same hotline for advice on going abroad.
Project Description
Since 2000, IOM Moldova has been working with trafficking survivors from Moldova exploited for sex, labour and begging in Europe and beyond.
Mostly young women and children, they are tricked into going abroad, often by people they know, and forced to work in inhumane conditions. They receive little or no money, and are often too scared of their traffickers to try to escape.
IOM also works with very vulnerable young women and children – victims of domestic violence, single mothers, children living in institutions, or children whose parents have gone abroad to work leaving them in the care of relatives or friends – who are most likely to become caught in the trafficking trap. Desperate for a better future, they believe what they are told about life abroad and accept job offers that often turn out to be false.
IOM works with organizations and law enforcement in other countries to find these women and children and bring them safely home. These survivors have the opportunity to spend time at the Chisinau Protection and Assistance Centre where they are given medical, legal, and psychological help and work with a social worker to start making decisions again about their lives. As many trafficking survivors are mothers who may not have seen their children for year
s, the Centre is also a safe place for mother and child to start to build a relationship again.
All the beneficiaries in the programme have an individual assistance plan. This can include psychological counselling, family counselling, finishing school or college, vocational training, or even starting a small business. Essential legal documents, often left behind during the victims' escape from their traffickers, are replaced.
This help can mean the difference between a bright future and being sold or sometimes re-sold into slavery.
In the Transnistria region the same services are provided to victims by IOM implementing partner NGO Interaction. The team offers multidisciplinary support, including psychological and legal assistance, vocational guidance, help with job placement, and start-up grants for small businesses. Since 2004, IOM and NGO Interaction have facilitated the return and assistance of 236 victims of trafficking—along with their children—originally from Transnistria, including assistance with documents and short-term help in the Chisinau Rehabilitation Centre.
One of the steps IOM takes to prevent trafficking and give people the information they need to make an informed decision about going abroad is to support a toll-free Hotline in the breakaway region of Transnistria, from which many young women are trafficked. The Hotline is run by a local organization and has played a major role in rescuing young women from sexual slavery in Turkey, Russia and Dubai. The Hotline operators also make sure that callers have the right information about the country they plan to go to and that they know the risks of migrating illegally.
- Repatriation of Moldovan trafficking victims identified in other countries
- Psychological, medical, and legal counselling and assistance at the Chisinau Protection and Assistance Centre
- Individual assistance for very vulnerable people who are most likely to be trafficked, including vocational training, help with finding a job, and help to get the documents necessary to be legally employed.
- Support to the Hotline in Transnistria – dealing with calls for help from trafficking victims and/or their families and offering free advice to those planning to go abroad
A woman's passport is a critical element in the trafficking experience. Giving the passport to a trafficker can be used as debt bondage while the confiscation of the passport coerces women into captivity. Recovering the passport is always an important step towards regaining freedom. © Dana Irina Popa/IOM 2007-MMD0075
