Objectives

What is A4’s objective?

 

The general objective of the A4 Project is to counter impunity for all actors involved in the trafficking of human beings (THB), particularly of women and girls for sexual exploitation, through enhancing Law Enforcement Agencies’ (LEAs’) investigation capacities, from one of the major THB gateways to EU territory, as well as through the exchange of knowledge and improvement of cooperation among 3 European countries with a key common characteristic: low conviction rates for human trafficking and other related offences.

  • Short Term Goals

    • Acquire knowledge and enhance multidisciplinary competences for police officers on effective investigation with a focus on existing gender stereotypes perpetuating impunity for perpetrators.
    • Build critical mass of police key pro-actors to enhance perpetrators’ accountability at an interregional level.
    • Create border-crossing alliance in the northern-eastern border of the EU, interconnected to central Europe for the protection of women/girls victims of sex trafficking.

  • Medium Term Goals

    • Improve LEAs’ multi-agency, inter-sectoral and cross-border cooperation, challenge systematic deficiencies and systematized effort to upgrade state authorities’ response in countering sex trafficking.
    • Strengthen inter-country coalitions against non-punishment habitats for perpetrators, evidenced through the effective application of the non-punishment principle of victims.
    • Enhance cooperation among governmental and non-governmental actors in countries of origin and transit, with a view to successfully prosecuting perpetrators.
    • Promote non-liability of female victims and destabilize gender stereotypes.

  • Long Term Goals

    • Develop procedural guarantees for safeguarding the Art. 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
    • Increase number of prosecutions, securing conviction of perpetrators.
    • Empower victims to redress, avoiding their re-victimisation.
    • Enhance social cohesion, fostering secure, resilient and sustainable societies.