Read the full report here
This is the nineteenth ‘Human trafficking and smuggling’ report. Every year, Myria offers an independent assessment of human trafficking and smuggling policy. Besides its tasks concerning fundamental rights and information on migration flows (see our Migration Report 2016), Myria has the specific task of encouraging the fight against this scourge and has been explicitly appointed as the independent National Rapporteur on Human Trafficking for Belgium. This work takes on a great many and generally low-profile forms, and this annual report is only one of the facets. Besides its usual sections (case analyses, legal and political developments, best practices and experiences, case law, focus, analyses in figures, recommendations), this report will also now include a summary of the various interventions, civil proceedings, training sessions and tasks that Myria conducts every year, allowing it to develop and maintain its expertise, including the development and maintenance of an important national and international network. For instance, Myria instituted civil proceedings in six new cases in 2015 (three concerning trafficking and three smuggling). As mentioned in previous reports, these civil proceedings are instituted for the following reasons: to examine the cases, the need to put our weight behind a case owing to its symptomatic nature, and to support the victims. The relative increase in cases related to smuggling is of course linked to the migration crisis Europe experienced in 2015. (Read the full report here)
