NARRATIVE REPORT 2012 - Caritas Internationalis

RAISING AWARENESSWith the purpose to raise awareness abouthuman trafficking and about variousinitiatives how to counteract it, COATNETdesigned the new user-friendly website thatoffers the list of hotlines to ask for assistance.The facebook page COATNET regularly sharesinformation on combating human traffickingactivities and some affiliates events.During the year with the help ofCommunications Department of CI therewere published/shared articles and storiescovering Network’s projects: in CaritasEspanola magazine, the Tablet, RadioVaticana English section on visit to Romania’sproject. The communications officer visitedNepal and Romania for collecting informationabout anti-trafficking projects of the affiliatesand wrote articles for the website.The article “Poverty and Trafficking” basedon information of Coatnet members andwritten by Francesca Petriliggieri, CaritasSpain, was asked to be published for theacademic volume Current controversies:Human Trafficking issued by CengageLearning.NETWORKING AND CAPACITYBUILDING36 organizations affiliated to COATNET in2012, among them there are two newaffiliates - Caritas Lithuania and CaritasTurkey). Meanwhile two affiliates stoppedtheir affiliation because of change inpriorities of work: Caritas Europa and CaritasLuxemburg.COATNET continued to work on betterinvolvement of African and Latin Americaregions in the network: presentation ofCoatnet work was made for African nationalCaritas and to the regional coordinator ofLatin America.Closer cooperation was established withCaritas Asia region: COATNET coordinatorparticipated in the Caritas Asia’s Anti-Trafficking Program meeting and contributedto the planning of future activities. Mutualcollaboration in capacity building oninternational advocacy has been planned.Working relationships with Commission onMigrants and Itinerant people and peopleresponsible for anti-trafficking issues wereestablished. The counteraction of HT throughbusiness (eg. responsible consumer choiceand production chains control) wasdiscussed.As a result of analysis of necessity in capacitybuilding among the affiliates, the nextCOATNET meeting will include a couple ofsessions on building practical capacity ofmembers, in particular on identification ofcases of trafficking for labour exploitation.BIAMSteering group considered three invitationsfor conducting the biennial meeting 2013 andtaking into consideration budget limits andstrategic aim to involve the region of LatinAmerica in the network, decided to chose theinvitation from Caritas Spain to host theevent in Madrid with the participation ofsome Caritas from Latin America asobservers.