Women East Smuggling Trafficking
The WEST project (an acronym for Women East Smuggling Trafficking) dealt with the problem of trafficking and smuggling for the sexual exploitation of women and children coming from Eastern Europe. Trafficking, nowadays the largest part of the clandestine immigration flow from the Balkans towards the EU, is characterised by an ever increasing presence of criminal organisations profiting on the exploitation of manpower, trafficking of human beings and induction of slavery and forced prostitution. This is a phenomenon that not only violates national laws which control entry to a country, it is also a perpetual and serious violation of human rights: people are reduced to a commodity and are often blackmailed for the rest of their life. The project involved the Emilia-Romagna region, the General Health and Social Policies Direction, as project leader. Partners of the project have been the regions of Lombardia, Veneto and Marche, the Autonomous Province of Trento, the Municipality of Perugia, the Caritas of Udine, the association "On the Road" of Martinsicuro (Teramo), the Austrian association "Mountain Unlimited" and the Albanian Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.