Introduction "A friend introduced me to a woman in Chiinu, she offered me a job abroad and said she would prepare a passport for me, for free. I asked if the job was sex related and she promised that it was not. I was forced by the boss to serve international soldiers and police officers I have never had a chance of running away and leaving that miserable life, because I was observed every moment by a woman.
Trafficking of women for forced prostitution is an abuse of human rights, not least the right to physical and mental integrity. It violates the rights of women and girls to liberty and security of person, and may even violate their right to life. It exposes women and girls to a series of human rights abuses at the hands of traffickers, and of those who buy their services.
It also renders them vulnerable to violations by governments which fail to protect the human rights of trafficked women. Amnesty International considers the trafficking of women for the purposes of forced prostitution to be a widespread and systematic violation of the human rights of women. Women are trafficked into Kosovo predominantly from Moldova, Bulgaria and Ukraine, the majority of them via Serbia.
At the same time, increasing numbers of local women and girls are being internally trafficked, and trafficked out of Kosovo. Although some women are abducted or coerced, many start their journeys from their home countries voluntarily, believing that the work they are offered - usually in western Europe - will enable them to break out of poverty or escape violence or abuse.
Often, as soon as their journey begins, so does the systematic abuse of their rights, in a strategy that reduces them to dependency on their trafficker, and later their "owner".
