More and more women from Central and Eastern Europe are being brought to Kosovo for prostitution, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). "We know of at least 30 women who have been trafficked, but we suspect that the numbers could be much higher", says IOM spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy, adding that several hundred women may be involved. "These women almost exclusively are not from Kosovo or Albania. They are ... from Central and Eastern Europe."

In early February, 12 young women were rescued by international troops from a nightclub at Slatina, near the Pristina airport. Their duties involved dispensing sexual favours, at 200 deutsche mark (DM) an hour, to foreign clients and wealthy Kosovars. The women were supposed to dance in erotic lingerie in front of their clients and then were taken to rooms upstairs for sex. According to one girl who did not disclose her name, the number of clients a woman had to service per night could have been as high as 12. She also said that the owner of the place had disappeared with all the money he promised to pay the girls. The women have since been repatriated.

"The situation these girls were in can only be described as horrendous", says Sandra Mitchell, Head of Human Rights at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office in Kosovo. "It's a clear-cut case of forced prostitution. These women, aged from 17 to 25, were forcibly brought here from their home countries where they had worked as shop assistants, seamstresses, waitresses, etc. They had been cheated into signing contracts to work as dancers in night-clubs in Western Europe, but instead brought into Kosovo. On the way, they had been repeatedly raped by police and border guards in their home countries, then by police in the so-called receiving countries." Nevertheless, not all the stories are the same. Some girls came to Kosovo knowing perfectly well where they were going and what they were supposed to do.

Liana (not her real name), 25, a striptease dancer at a nightclub in Pristina, used to work as a nurse in a children's clinic in her native Moldova, earning the equivalent of DM30 per month. "How could a person live on this?" she says. So when a friend mentioned that there was some guy recruiting prostitutes for Kosovo where Liana would be able to earn as much as DM4,500 per month, she immediately decided to go. "Since I didn't have any decent income, but still had some looks … Why not?" she says. Liana wants to earn at least DM10,000 and then go back home. Although she was married twice, she is determined to start a new family and have children. But so far, after two months in Kosovo, she has made only one fifth of that.

Liana and five other girls share one room in a shabby peasant's hut on the outskirts of Pristina. Each has to pay DM250 per month for "rent". Every evening, a small bus comes to pick them up and bring them to the nightclub. After work, which normally ends at 5 a.m., they get back to their "residence" by the same bus. However, if there is a wealthy client who would buy Liana or some other girl for "after-hours", then the way back is her responsibility. There are no days off, no spare time. At their hut, almost every move is controlled by security guards.

But Liana doesn't regret her initial decision. The only thing that she would like to change is the country. "I know girls from my hometown who now work in Japan or Western Europe", she says. "They've already made a fortune. And they say it's so nice there."

The IOM suspects the large international presence in the province may be one factor in the rise in prostitution. "There is a demand, and the fact that you have 45,000 foreigners in Kosovo could be one element in the equation", Mr. Chauzy says. "It's definitely not the whole equation." Some women apparently are being "re-exported" to Western Europe.

According to Gilles Moreau, Head of the Media Relations Office of the UN Mission in Kosovo's Police in Pristina, the police are going around local clubs or bars "where there are some dancing acts by women to make sure that … all the people that are there are there voluntarily and want to be in those clubs". There are also other angles that the police are looking at, he says. "Is there some charge that we can bring against the owners of these places? How can we get them out of business? Or, in a controlled business, whether these women are there of their own free will and are not subjected to having contracts or having to work off a debt. So we are looking at all these different possibilities and we want to protect them as much as we can," Mr. Moreau adds.

A First Conviction The first guilty verdict for trafficking in women was issued in Kosovo on 5 February 2001. A three-and-a-half-year sentence was imposed on a defendant in a trial under way in Pec. Derek Chappell, a UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo spokesman said the verdict "sends a strong message to those who would buy and sell human beings for profit: that the courts will support the police with strong sanctions".