Access to justice is generally recognized as one of the fundamental human rights. Yet, due to various reasons and obstacles, victims of human trafficking are prevented to fully exercise this basic right. Romania and Bulgaria are two of the main origin states (from East part of Europe) for victims of human trafficking exploited internally and externally in western regions of Europe (countries as Spain, Belgium, Sweden being seen as destination ones).
Although in the last years some improvements in the legislation were done, still there are problems such as implementation in practice of the normative acts and their harmonization process, insufficient access to legal aid for victims, a low number of specialized lawyers in assisting victims.
The project Strengthening multidisciplinary cooperation to ensure an effective referral, assistance, rights protection for victims of human trafficking is focused on mutual learning, exchange of practices, increase number of specialized legal professionals and their capacity to work in multidisciplinary teams to tackle accordingly the victims’ needs, increase the awareness among stakeholders on the need to develop a legal assistance referral strategy to ensure a more sustainable collaboration between authorities legal practitioners NGOs as service providers in / between origin-destination countries.
These actions, as part of the project, will lead to ensure several rights- as indicated in the Directive 2012/29/EU on establishing minimum standards on rights, support and protection of victims of crime – are fully respected: receive information from the first contact with authorities; receive correct and complete information about the case in which are involved as injured parties / civil parties claiming compensations; better victims support services; right to protection; training of practitioners; better cooperation and coordination of services.