Referal Tool for Legal Assistance THB Victims
The publication “Referral for legal assistance in the case of victims of
human trafficking” was developed in the project “Strengthening multidisciplinary
cooperation to ensure an effective referral, assistance, rights protection for victims of
human trafficking”, financed by the European Commission, Justice Programme. The
project was implemented by Association Pro Refugiu Romania (Coordinator), Caritas
International Belgium (Partner), Association Trabe Iniciativas para la Economia
Social y Solidaria Spain (Partner), Scandinavian Human Rights Lawyers Sweden
(Partner).
The necessity of implementing the project and implicitly the elaboration of the
publication have started from a series of frequent challenges faced by victims of
human trafficking – especially the issue of legal assistance and representation that
should be available throughout the judicial proceedings.
Access to justice is generally recognized as one of the fundamental human
rights. Yet, due to various reasons and obstacles, victims of human trafficking are
prevented to fully exercise this basic right.
The development of a legal assistance referral strategy is more than necessary due
to multiple reasons:
in many countries, there is no proper strategy concerning the identificationreferral-
assistance for victims of human trafficking.
the existence, in certain countries, of mechanisms for the identificationreferral-
assistance, but which are applied in practice incompletely with limited
effectiveness – the aspects related to legal assistance being mentioned very
succinctly, insufficiently.
the almost nonexistent cross-border cooperation of the victims’ lawyers from
countries of origin and destination, even if it is well-known the transnational
dimension of human trafficking and that many times the trial means legal
procedures in both types of countries.
The publication is structured in 6 chapters and the presentation mode makes it easy
for the information to be taken over by different countries regardless of whether they
are countries of origin and / or destination.
