Strengthening the National Capacities in Counter Trafficking in Human Beings in North Macedonia

The Balkan Route is the fastest sub-route towards Europe with well-developed road infrastructure and relatively fewer border crossings, making the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia a source and a transit country for human trafficking and smuggling of migrants. The country is in a process of developing new legislative frameworks in the area of migration, asylum and trafficking in human beings. In light of these circumstance, specific needs have been identified to enhance national stakeholders’ capacities in the area of identification, referral and sheltering of victims of trafficking (VoTs) and resocialization and reintegration of VoTs.

The main goal of the project is to contribute to the national efforts to effectively counter human trafficking and strengthen its efforts in protecting trafficked persons and vulnerable migrants through providing capacity building training for 450 professionals from relevant national institutions and civil society organizations. The training program will be developed based on a training needs assessment in close cooperation with the national authorities, and the programme will aim to support the stakeholders in implementing the new legislation and relevant operational documents related to human trafficking. Additionally, it will strengthen the capacities of the relevant stakeholders to effectively identify migrants vulnerable to trafficking in human beings and other exploitative practices.

The project complements the efforts of the on-going EU Delegation funded project “Strengthening the national capacities in the area of asylum, migration and trafficking in human beings”, which is currently implemented by IOM Skopje.