Trafficking Prevention project – TRAPP

Project Duration: January - March 2012

Donors: British Foreign and Commonwealth Office - British Embassy in Belgrade

Trafficking prevention project (TRAPP), active from January to March 2012, was a result of a close cooperation between IOM, Border Police Directorate and the British Embassy in Belgrade that supported the project with GBP 35,000 from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office funds. Department for Illegal Migration of the Border Police was particularly concerned with the many instances in which they encountered links between drug trafficking and human trafficking/smuggling. Indeed, organized crime groups have often engaged in both criminal acts and profited doubly from these seemingly intertwined activities. Evidence shown that more and more human trafficking victims are addicted to drugs, heroin in particular, even though the drugs are not being purchased by the victims and therefore are evidently directly made available by the trafficker. Despite realizing the connection between these two forms of crime, no police units within the Ministry of Interior have ever had the opportunity to thoroughly investigate this inter-connection.

Key project objective was to share good practices and learn from the experience of EU MS Law Enforcement Agencies on the linkages between human trafficking and drug trafficking.

Project achievements include:

  • 27 police officers (Department for combating organized crime – human trafficking and drugs section; Border Police – Section for combating cross-border crime and section for combating human trafficking and illegal migration; Department for criminal police – drugs and human trafficking units from Belgrade, Nis, Novi Sad and Kragujevac, Department for education and 2 representatives of the Ministry of justice (Appellate court prosecutor, Ministry adviser/EU integration department) trained on how to establish linkages between drugs trafficking and human trafficking; The workshops were designed jointly by the representatives of the Austrian Federal Police (trafficking and drugs unit), the Serbian Police (organized crime, criminal police, and border police) and the IOM Mission in Belgrade.
  • Links between the counter trafficking and counter narcotics unit were established.
  • Police officers from the two departments jointly created a checklist with indicators making linkages between the two issues – drug abuse and human trafficking.
  • Training Manual created by the team of experts ‘ from the drugs and human trafficking police units, available in both Serbian and English language.
  • Manual, unique of this kind in Europe, was publicly presented by the Minister of Interior at a regional anti-trafficking event in Belgrade.

Project Status: Completed