Katya is one of those unlucky women trafficked across borders. With a two-year-old daughter and a failing marriage in the Czech Republic, Katya took the advice of a "friend" and decided to make good money as a waitress in The Netherlands. Leaving her daughter behind, she and four other young women were driven to Amsterdam, where a Dutch trafficker joined their Czech trafficker. Katya was taken to a brothel. After saying "I will not do this," she was told, "Yes, you will, if you want your daughter back in the Czech Republic to live."

After years of threats and forced prostitution, Katya was finally rescued by a cab driver. She is now working at a hospital and studying for a degree in social work.

Supported in part by U.S. funding, people like Sister Eugenia Bonetti of Italy are on the frontlines of fighting human trafficking in Europe and Eurasia. Bonetti, coordinator of anti-trafficking strategies for the Italian Union of Major Superiors, has seen firsthand the injustice suffered by trafficked women over her 24-year career in Kenya and Italy. Bonetti and her team of some 200 sisters, working full-time in the fight against trafficking in persons (TIP), have opened their homes throughout Italy to provide shelter, security, and care to hundreds of victims. She also has worked with nuns in Nigeria, encouraging local efforts in the remotest and poorest communities to prevent trafficking and to assist in the rehabilitation of repatriated victims.

Efforts such as Bonetti's are the reason why the U.S. government has provided more than $70 million for anti-trafficking programs around the world in the last fiscal year alone.

Progress in the battle against human trafficking is difficult to quantify, largely because it is an underground criminal activity, and also because awareness of the crime is relatively recent. However, U.S. programs are having good effects. The U.S. annual Trafficking in Persons Report, for example, has stimulated action by offering frank assessments of countries that may have laws but fail to implement them or that fail to prosecute the traffickers. The report has proven useful to U.S. embassies in engaging governments around the globe.

In Eastern Europe, the desire to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also has been an incentive for governments to develop national action plans and to pass legislation against human trafficking. A number of countries in the region have demonstrated the importance they place on fighting this scourge by including references to their efforts in their official country statements at the 2003 and 2004 U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

Educating people and raising awareness of the human rights problem has led to helpful research and programs to assist former victims. Research in Ukraine has shown that 33 percent of the women trafficked had previously been victims of domestic violence. The lack of jobs, the need to provide for dependent family members, and the lure of nearby countries with higher standards of living made many women perfect prey for traffickers promising employment and travel abroad.

One remedy: A U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) project in Ukraine with Winrock International, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) working with the poor in many countries, has established trafficking prevention centers where victims can seek job training as well as crisis counseling. Similar projects have started in Russia, Belarus, and Moldova.

Another nongovernmental organization, La Strada, developed a handbook for telephone hotline workers. It provides information on various kinds of work visas, international labor agreements, job contracts, consular telephone numbers to call in Ukraine and abroad, and what to do and where to go if an individual or a family member becomes a victim. USAID has supported hotlines in many countries of the Europe and Eurasia region, including most recently in the Kyrgyz Republic.

USAID-funded training institutes have begun to focus on two other important groups: journalists and law enforcement. After two days of training, reporters have typically revised their approach to the subject, treating it more seriously and less sensationally in spite of the danger involved. (In 2003, several journalists who had been reporting on trafficking and corruption in Uzbekistan and Montenegro were killed under suspicious circumstances.)

Law enforcement training, based on a manual created by the United Nations Development Programme and the International Center for Migration Policy Development, has educated police, prosecutors, and judges on how to handle human trafficking cases and how to identify and protect victims. Training also raised awareness of the deep link between trafficking and corruption. Programs, notably in Central Asia, have emphasized the importance of regional cooperation between governments and NGOs, and on the training of border guards and consular officials.

And, most recently, the United States is assisting Romania in developing a victim-witness coordinator program based on U.S. experience, which hopefully will lead to training modules that can be applied throughout the region.

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