Defensa de Niños Internacional Costa Rica
Defensa de Niños Internacional Costa Rica
Project Title
Improving integral services and specialized assistance to victims of trafficking in Central America
Location of Project
Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras
Project Objective
To increase integral services and specialized assistance to victims of trafficking, especially children and adolescents. The project is being held in Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica.
Description of Grant Recipient
DNI Costa Rica has been working to combat human trafficking in Costa Rica and Central America for over 17 years. At the national level, DNI Costa Rica’s work focuses on prevention and protection for trafficked victims and raising awareness about human trafficking; often, its work focuses in rural areas and promotes community-based strategies for combating human trafficking.
DNI Costa Rica also works at the regional level to combat trafficking. This work has involved training government officials in regional governments on how to prevent the crime of trafficking in persons, detect and protect victims of human trafficking. DNI Costa Rica works closely with its other DNI offices, as well as with many governments, non-governmental and international organizations working in the region.
Description of Project
Costa Rica is a source, transit and destination country for victims of human trafficking, primarily for sexual exploitation, including child sex tourism. Honduras has high rates of trafficking, also primarily for sexual exploitation. Guatemala has the highest trafficking rate of the three countries, with victims used for both sexual exploitation and forced labour, and often trafficked northwards to Mexico.
This project aims to combat this regional trafficking problem by training immigration police and consular
training, early detection, protection
Consolidated Annual Progress Report 2013 13
Costa Rica, Defensa de Niños International, Gender Workshop
bodies, on how to detect and provide special attention to trafficked victims. In addition, the project will work other anti-trafficking stakeholders to promote comprehensive protection and assistance for victims.
Key achievements
The activities implemented to-date have been underpinned by the core objective of the project, which is to ensure that;
1. victims of trafficking are detected and receive protection and legal assistance in Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica and;
2. children and adolescent victims of trafficking are detected and assisted, around the border areas of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
The bulk of work undertaken so far has focused on developing constructive working conditions with other actors and stakeholders in the region. As some of the activities will be implemented with national authorities, this preliminary preparation was deemed vital to guarantee the sustainability of activities/results.
Key challenges
The project has garnered interest from national coalitions, primarily because the project fits within the wider context of the anti-trafficking activities in the Central American region. However, due to the fact that some of the activities will be implemented with multiple stakeholders, it has been necessary for DNI Costa Rica to devise alternative solutions to meet DNI’s goals, and support the objectives of the various entities. This has also led to delay in concluding issues, particularly when working with government institutions. Furthermore, a key counterpart organization in Guatemala ceased to exist and a replacement has yet to be identified.