This article was sent out on United Press International's wires on December 13.

From the Think Tanks & Research Desk

BOLOGNA, Italy, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Italy's vast coastline and its proximity to unstable regions allow transnational criminal networks to make the country a gateway for human trafficking into Western Europe, according to scholars from European and American think tanks.

The analysts met last week at the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, known as SAIS.

Human trafficking in Italy includes immigrants smuggled into the country by boat, but also includes women and children being smuggled into the country for sexual exploitation.

Although the problem is prevalent throughout Europe, Sara Stephens, operations officer for the Geneva-based International Catholic Migration Commission, said government action against trafficking needs to be coupled with public outcry, which she says is currently lacking. Publicly funded and affiliated with the Catholic Church, the ICMC assists vulnerable migrants and conducts research in more than 20 countries.

Europeans are either ignorant about human trafficking or unwilling to act on it, said Stephens, especially trafficking in individuals for sexual exploitation, a human rights violation she likens to slavery.

"What defines a rights abuse in this case is the confiscation of the person's passport, transit over borders without their knowledge, and imprisonment into debt bondage where the person is not in control of their income," Stephens said. "For those trafficked into sex work, it also includes extreme sexual abuse and forced drug abuse in order to create compliance."

Sexually exploited Central and Eastern European women are typically duped into believing their captors will give them a better life, according to Stephens.

"Most are deceived through false promises of employment, that they will be united with family members, or promises of education," Stephens said.

A recent report by The Protection Project, a SAIS-sponsored human rights research institute in Washington, claims that many of the tens of thousands of foreign women currently work as prostitutes in Italy were trafficked there. Citing non-governmental organizations and media sources, the report claims the number of foreign prostitutes on Italian streets includes up to 30,000 Nigerians, 35,000 Eastern Europeans and 15,000 Albanians.

The problem is especially prevalent in Bologna, where a large number of Nigerian women prostitute themselves every night on the roads circling the city's historic center, according to SAIS professor Tom Dewar. Dewar is affiliated with the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development, known as CCSDD, which acts as a research and training institute for transitioning democracies in Europe and North Africa. CCSDD is a joint project between SAIS and the University of Bologna School of Law.

European women are typically brought to Italy via routes that were created for arms trafficking during Balkan wars, according to Bernardo Mariani, project coordinator for Central and Eastern Europe at Safer World, a London-based think tank that specializes in global conflict. The strait between southern Italy and Albania allows criminal gangs easy access to the peninsula because it can be crossed by speedboat in a matter of hours, he says.

Once in Italy, sexually exploited women typically fail to come forward because of compliance or fear of becoming targets of the law, according to Michele Clark, co-director the SAIS Protection Project.

Once recent positive development in the trafficking situation is Italy's passage of a law that allows women victims of human trafficking to obtain asylum in the country regardless of whether they testify against their captors. In many European countries, according to Clark, asylum is typically connected to a victim's ability to identify their captor.

The problem in Italy, according to Clark, is that local authorities enforce the law at their own discretion.

"Talking to some of the women in Italy, I have found that the discrepancy between what is on the books and implementing the law is vast," Clark says. "I was troubled by hearing representatives of the Nigerian Women's Association in Bologna say that law enforcement officials respond as if the law didn't exist. Many of them have come forward only to be told they cannot stay in the country even though the statute says they can. This obviously flies in the face of legislation -- there appears to be a chasm between the law and what is practiced that is far from being settled at this point."

Italy has been under pressure by other members of the European Union to tighten its borders, according to Dewar, but the problem is that the points of entry in southern Italy lack the resources for proper vigilance.

"If you are a local authority and you are suddenly told to stop boats to deal with these people and turn them around, you have to have training, you have to have facilities and language abilities," Dewar says. "So it is quite a commitment to take something that the government has not been attentive to and to make (them adequately follow the) law."

Criminal ties between countries also make it difficult to stop the problem, Mariani says.

"What worries me is that these are very complex networks that we're talking about, and they almost operate like multinational companies," Mariani says. "They are very experienced in exploiting loopholes in national legislation and national employment practices, for example, and the approach to this should be a transnational one. Crime is becoming much more sophisticated in the way it operates and traditional approaches to law enforcement are not sufficient."

Mariani cites organizations like the international police organization Interpol, and collaboration between Albanian and Italian police as positive steps, but he says that to truly succeed, authorities must start combating traffickers with some of their own tactics.

"There is really a lot of improvement needed in national cooperation, especially concerning Balkan countries," Mariani says. "That doesn't just mean money, but resources, training, and establishing networks in law enforcement communities and between countries. In order to keep pace, law enforcement officials will need to develop networks like criminals have established networks."