From the capital of Tirana to remote Albanian villages across the nation, The Albanian Initiative: Coordinated Action Against Human Trafficking (CAAHT) is casting a wide net in its quest to prevent Albanian children and young adults from being trafficked. This six-year program (2004 to 2009) is made possible by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International, Inc. CAAHT is galvanizing the efforts of local government and civil society representatives to lead their communities in practical steps to decrease trafficking of Albania’s citizens and provide life-changing opportunities to victims and those at-risk. With the support of more than $2 million in grants dispersed during its first three years, the project has helped open the only transit shelter for victims, provided vocational classes for more than 310 marginalized girls and young women, and raised the awareness of teenagers and adults across the country about the realities of trafficking and the need to care for its victims through cross-sectoral cooperation.

Pooling Partners’ Experience to Improve Lives

By providing a forum for information exchange and collaboration across the country, CAAHT seeks to reduce the number of persons who are trafficked in Albania and increase the number of survivors who are successfully reintegrated into their communities through social support systems and employment. The first three years of CAAHT activities have resulted in numerous achievements through the cooperative efforts of the project partners and staff including:

• 310 women and children who were victims of trafficking reintegrating into Albanian society, recovering healthier lives;
• 50,100 women, men, girls and boys were reached through trafficking awareness raising and prevention programs implemented by CAAHT grantees;
• 90% of the people reached with awareness raising and prevention activities remembered the message six months later; over 50% of them took a specific action to try to prevent trafficking.
• improved exchange of information, techniques and strategies between different stakeholders, especially civil society and local government actors outside the capital and other major cities;
• increased knowledge in anti-trafficking through public awareness campaigns;
• increased the availability of information on the responsibilities of the government actors at the central and local levels;
• creating an environment where different anti-trafficking actors can meet each other and communicate; and
• facilitating the creation of Regional Committees in the Fight Against Trafficking in Human Beings, which were formalized in June 2006 under the leadership of Prefects by an order of the Prime Minister.

CAAHT activities from 2007 to 2009 will concentrate on consolidating these achievements. Technical assistance and grants will be provided to support civil society and government partners to develop systems and funding sources to help ensure the sustainability of Albania’s “anti-trafficking community”.

Grants

Over $2 million in CAAHT grants were disbursed during the first three years of the program. An additional $700,000 has been added to this fund for projects to be implemented in 2007 to 2009. These grants provide Albanian agencies the means to bolster their own work in trafficking prevention and victim assistance, including reintegration, leading to better and geographically expanded services. In 2005 and 2006, 19 national/local NGOs and two international NGOs received grants which were screened to ensure their abilities, experience and resources would complement those of other CAAHT partners and increase cooperation between government and civil society. Collaboration with CAAHT partners has yielded demonstrable results, in line with the Albanian government’s national anti-trafficking strategy.

Coordination

CAAHT has three Regional Cluster Groups that act as forums for coordinating anti-trafficking work among the local government and civil society agencies. The goal is to get these partners to produce, together, approaches that are results-oriented in specific areas of anti-trafficking. CAAHT Regional Cluster Groups have improved information sharing, collaborative analysis of patterns of trafficking in human beings in local areas, program cooperation among government and civil society actors and generated the concept that has become the Prefect-led Regional Committees in the Fight Against Trafficking in Human Beings.

The CAAHT 2005 and 2006 Annual Conferences gathered over 100 stakeholders each year to exchange information, lessons learned and to demonstrate a national consensus that recognizes human beings are trafficked in Albania and affirms the urgent need to take action against these crimes. The extensive knowledge of Albania's "anti-trafficking community" has been mobilized through national experts who presented practical models and principles for anti-trafficking work in panel and working group presentations. Evaluation feedback overwhelming reveals that conference participants especially value the extensive agenda time dedicated to small- and working-group discussions (over 50% in 2005 and more than 75% in 2006) which enable partners to share best practices and seek solutions together to overcome obstacles that hinder effective anti-trafficking work in Albania.

Access to information, such as reports from CAAHT and its partners, help project grantees make their anti-trafficking programs more efficiently run and more responsive to victims’ needs. CAAHT program staff prepare an annual report describing the "The State of Efforts to Combat Trafficking of Persons in Albania". The CAAHT stakeholder database is an up-to-date resource of contact information for key civil society and local government representatives who are actively combating trafficking of women and children in the country.

The CAAHT project welcomes Albanian organizations and individuals from across various sectors to join in the effort to promote a better, more secure future for Albania’s most vulnerable citizens.

Together we can build sustainable approaches to combat trafficking of women and children in Albania!