Living for Tomorrow's anti-trafficking hotline in the Baltic country of Estonia is a life-line for victims and those vulnerable to human trafficking. The hotline:
- Gives people a place to report trafficking incidents.
- Helps advise people how to migrate safely, and so avoid being trafficked.
- Offers counselling and advice to both women and men who have been
trafficked.
- Gives practical assistance to people who have escaped trafficking situations.
topAbout the Country
Estonia is one of the Baltic Countries. On May 1, 2004 Estonian Republic became a full
member state of the European Union. The total population of the country is 1.3 million.
Estonia is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for
the purpose of sexual exploitation. Estonian women and girls are trafficked to Finland,
Sweden, Norway, and to a lesser extent, other EU countries. Women from Russia, Latvia,
and Ukraine are trafficked through Estonia to Nordic countries and some victims are
believed to be transited to China and Japan. Women from Russia, Latvia, and Ukraine are
also trafficked to Estonia primarily for sexual exploitation.
A national plan to prevent human trafficking between 2006 and 2009 was approved on
January 26, 2006 in Estonia, a significant source country of women and girls traded for
trafficking. Under the plan, Estonia will monitor and document problems related to
human trafficking in order to obtain comprehensive and reliable information about the
scope and forms of human trafficking. They will also work to educate the public about
the problem.
Government leaders fear trafficking will increase if the East European member states of
the European Union (EU) join the Schengen open-borders agreement in 2007, whereby
travellers arriving at one of the EU's outer borders are checked only once, and thereafter>
have freedom to cross all the other national borders in the Shengen states.
In 2007 Living For Tomorrow anti-trafficking hotline service will become part of the
national programme of the Development Plan for Combating Trafficking in Human
Beings 2006-2009.
Why do people become victims of people trafficking? The reasons vary and are quite
complex, but the underlying cause is a wish to find a better life somewhere else, mostly
in more developed countries or bigger cities. This desire to migrate is exploited by
traffickers. Other factors which make people vulnerable to trafficking are; poverty,
unemployment, economical and social inequality and discrimination against women.
For more information on human trafficking in Estonia: http://gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Estonia/htm.
topExplanation of the Project
The main goal of the hotline service is to prevent trafficking in persons, and to provide
protection and support for trafficked persons. The purposes of the hotline are
dissemination of information on the issue of trafficking in persons among Estonian
women who are potential victims of smuggling; the promotion of women's understanding
of their human rights; the provision of effective support to victims; the establishment of
a database on the violation of human rights; to inform the Estonian authorities and
community about the problem of trafficking in human rights framework. The focus of our
hotline activity is to support, inform, deliberate and assist the victims of trafficking.
To achieve this goal, organisation provides the following activities:
- Providing a telephone hotline and website to give interactive consulting;
- Providing legal consulting to the hotline clients through hotline number, website
and individuals consultations;
- Organizing an interactive training session for volunteers, who could provide
consultation on hotline;
- Disseminating information about trafficking of persons and advertising the
hotline's operation among Estonian population;
- Collecting informational and statistical data on the issue of trafficking in persons;
- Producing preventive material for people going abroad with all information
needed in Estonian and Russian;
- Developing cooperation and network among different local governmental
institutions and NGO's in order to increase their awareness of the problem and
promote assistance of trafficking victims.
LFT provides both preventive consultations and direct help for persons, who had been
trafficked. The Anti-trafficking Hotline Service started to work in October 2004, and
since then, the hotline has received more than 850 calls from persons who were going
abroad or have come back to Estonia. 40% of them are men.
Anti-Trafficking Hotline Service operates on every work day from 10 AM till 6 PM
under the main principles of anonymity, an individual approach and confidentiality. In
the scope of the project activity LFT provides information for employment in the EU and
non-EU countries as well as legal aid to victims or those who are planning to go abroad
including consultations to their relatives. Also LFT provides an access to information
sources and judiciary through free legal aids in Estonian, Russian and English languages.
The hotline operation provides confidential contacts with women for the registration of
human rights abuses. Through the hotline the staff speak to persons who have returned
from countries of destination. LFT protects the women's confidentiality and provides
legal support as well as human rights counselling in general. The LFT's staff are
extremely well trained and experienced in work with victims of human trafficking. The
grave human rights violations committed against trafficked women are rarely
documented because of restricted access to victims. The main reasons of calling to
Hotline are following: particular offer job abroad, general opportunities of employment
abroad, missing persons and trafficking/ fraud cases. LFT registered 5 cases of domestic
violation and 2 cases of human trafficking for purpose of sexual exploitation and forced
labour.
Case study
In August 2005 Living for Tomorrow received a call from a friend of a 20-year old girl from Estonia who had been sold to organized group in Bulgaria. The Estonian trafficker had promised her a well-paid job that was supposed to involve taking care of an invalid, but when she reached Bulgaria she was forced into street prostitution. The girl had been threatened and was very scared. After two weeks of abuse she managed to run away from the people who were exploiting her. LFT immediately helped her make contact with a shelter in Bulgaria and in collaboration with Bulgarian NGO Animus helped her to return to Estonia. After 3 days the girl was returned to Estonia. Living For Tomorrow staff met her at the airport in Tallinn and helped her to find the help she now needed. Due to an emergency reaction to a call from victim and cooperation with Bulgarian NGOs Animus and La Strada-Bulgaria LFT could help woman to return back to home.
topHistory of the Project
The idea of creating a hotline service on prevention of human trafficking beings in
Estonia was born in 2003. In October, 2004 the first hotline on the problems of prevention of trafficking in women was opened in Estonia in the framework of the joint project "Anti-Trafficking Hotline Service for Women by Living for Tomorrow" supported by U.S. State Department and Finnish Embassy in Tallinn partly. According to the project, the hotline service was to provide information and social assistance on trafficking in women, but actually LFT helped men as well as women. The hotline operates at present with the support of the British Embassy in Tallinn and the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Tallinn.
The staff of the organisation have created and developed a special program for hotline
data by which LFT registers all coming calls from hotline clients according to the
following main sections: date, name, gender, age, education, place of inhabitation of
staying, source of getting information about hotline, country of destination, professions
looking for, character of incoming calls, consultation giving, citizenship, other. The
programme gives possibilities for preparing statistical breakdown of the Hotline Service
for each separately section.
LFT carries out training for volunteers to operate the hotline and web site. The LFT's
staff made design of a separate user-friendly web-site for interactive consultations on the
topics of trafficking, moving to countries of European Union and other countries for the
purposes of finding a job, study or marriage abroad. The website can be found at
www.lft.ee. LFT has trained 13 volunteers to operate the hotline.
LFT was one of the very few national organizations to begin to work in the field of
preventing prostitution and human trafficking among young people since 1999. So before
opening of hotline service LFT staff had good experience of hotline work in Ukraine and
was extremely well trained and experienced in the work with victims.
topAbout the organisation
NGO Living for Tomorrow (LFT) was founded on August 17, 1999 by people seeking
more effective ways to make sexual information and education more interesting,
understandable, and acceptable by way of participatory learning facilitating gender
awareness. The creation of Living for Tomorrow is an initiative from the NIKK (Nordic
Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Research). The main objectives:
- To acknowledge and communicate the existence of gender issues, relations and
attitudes in social, cultural and health terms;
- To help prevent HIV/AIDS and other STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases);
- To facilitate understanding between different ethnic groups and their integration
in Estonian society;
- To prevent human trafficking and to provide protection and support for trafficked
persons.
Since 2000 the organisation has been carrying out anti-trafficking project activity in
Estonia in the following areas: informational campaigns, lobbying, prevention, educational
campaigns, social assistance (legal counselling and hotline service.)