"It is a form of modern day slavery.
Women, children and, more often than not, men from around the world fall prey to ruthless networks making substantial profits. They are modern day slaves and forced labour victims. In 2009 the ILO (International Labour Organization) estimated that from human trafficking alone the annual illegal profits amount to 32 billion dollars. In every one of its forms human trafficking crushes human dignity, violates fundamental human rights, corrupts the human conscience by fostering corruption, undermines global security and growth and provides trafficking networks with enormous financial gains.

Taking into account the tragic dimensions of this problem in the modern world, the Council of Europe has adopted in 2008 the Convention against Trafficking in Human Beings.
Our country has adopted in 2009 a National Action Plan to fight Human Trafficking, while a National Coordination Mechanism was established by representatives of the competent bodies.

We have decided to establish an open cross-party interparliamentary committee on the issue of human trafficking, comprising Members of the Hellenic Parliament who expressed the will to participate in such a committee.
This committee functions as a subcommittee of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights and it convenes regularly.

The objectives of this committee are:

• to raise citizen awareness on the subject,
• parliamentary control and surveillance of the enforced policies and evaluation of their effectiveness,
• to follow-up on the implementation of the National Action Plan and to suggest amendments,
• to interact with the competent bodies of the State and the Civil Society dealing with this issue and to support their work.

At the same time, our Committee participates in the European Network of relevant Parliamentary Committees, which aims to facilitate experience exchange, raise awareness among the citizens and the competent international bodies, as well as to coordinate our actions at the parliamentary level.
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