Victims of domestic exploitation and forced prostitution in Shkoder lack support to reintegrate, while the police, prosecutors, and courts fail to punish the perpetrators. But soon after they arrived, he sold her off to traffickers for thousand leks approximately 3, euros and forced her into prostitution. Now, at age 45, she says that her life was stolen at only 20 years old, when she was ripped away from home and her family, who had disapproved of her relationship.
I could not do anything. After two years in Greece, the traffickers sold her to others in Italy, where she worked for 13 years until she suffered an accident, which left her with a metal rod in her foot. After the accident she returned to Shkoder, but her circumstances did not change. She told BIRN that her parents had passed away, and her brother had ceased all communication with her. In poor living conditions, she resumed sex work. Albania has a tragic history of human trafficking of young women to be exploited for prostitution, which boomed immediately after the fall of the communist dictatorship until the end of As BIRN found in a previous investigation , a great number of victims of forced prostitution face difficulties to be re-integrated in society and thus return to prostitution.
A report by Albanian Police states that at least 5, women and girls were victims of sex trafficking between and According to this report, around 22 per cent were minors when trafficked. Although the type of trafficking that G. And the majority of those accused of forcing women into prostitution end up with suspended sentences. Data from the local police, as well as from the Regional Committee Against Trafficking, state that there are no registered cases of trafficking in the past years, but both institutions report cases of exploitation of women in the city of Shkoder.
Meanwhile, official police data for list two new cases of exploitation through prostitution. Meanwhile, from January 1 until September 12, , four other cases were also uncovered. Furthermore, a report from the National Coordinator for Issues Concerning War Against Trafficking of Persons notices that beside the trafficking to western countries, there is domestic trafficking of women and girls with the intention of exploitation. The report nonetheless highlights the existence of domestic as well as foreign trafficking of women who are sent from town to town and are forced into prostitution.
An increase of the domestic trafficking intended for prostitution is also highlighted in the latest report on trafficking of human beings compiled by the United States State Department. According to Shkoder police and the prosecutors, the recruiting methods are the same, but they both note that a number of those who work in prostitution in Albania are women in their 40s who had previously been victims of sex trafficking, or those with family or economic problems.
