Labour, Christian parties want more money in fight against human trafficking
Coalition party ChristenUnie and opposition party PvdA want the government to invest at least 10 million euros per year extra into the fight against human trafficking and forced prostitution. This money must go to the police, so that more specialized investigators can be recruited and trained, the parties' leaders said to RTL Nieuws.
According to the two parties, the "detection of complex and large-scale human trafficking is coming under pressure". The authorities see fewer suspects, victims and witnesses of human trafficking, but the extent of this crime is not decreasing in the Netherlands, ChristenUnie and PvdA said.
Last year the National Rapporteur on Human Trafficking said that only about one in five victims of human trafficking in the Netherlands are identified and helped. And that between 5 thousand and 7 thousand men, women and children fall victim to human trafficking in the Netherlands each year.
"We have to stand up for the often young victims of human trafficking", PvdA leader Lodewijk Asscher said to the broadcaster. "They deserve for us to prosecute the unscrupulous criminals who get rich from this crime."
"Trafficking in human beings and forced prostitution destroy people. We must not resign ourselves to that injustice", ChristenUnie leader Gert-Jan Segers said.
