SARAJEVO (Reuters) - U.N. police in Bosnia and one
member of a NATO-led force have been involved in prostitution and a
trade in women that the Balkan country should do more to prevent, a U.N.
report said Thursday.
The report accused the authorities of going after
the victims of trafficking rather than the true culprits. It said the
women are often denied basic legal rights when detained.
``Bosnia-Herzegovina has emerged as a significant
destination point for women trafficked from Eastern Europe,'' said the
report released by the U.N. mission in Bosnia and the Office of the U.N.
High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The two agencies said they had dealt with 40 cases
of suspected trafficking of people in the year to March, involving 182
women.
Most were in their 20s but five were under 18.
``The women in these cases were almost all foreign
nationals, hailing from five countries -- Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Moldova,
Romania and the Ukraine,'' it said.
``In approximately 14 cases ... there was evidence
of complicity by police, mostly local police but also some international
police, as well as foreign military (SFOR troops),'' the report said.
``All these groups were implicated as clients,
though only local police and one SFOR member were apparently involved in
buying and selling the women,'' the report said.
The U.N. International Police Task Force (IPTF)
oversees the restructuring of Bosnia's police while the 20,000-strong
NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) maintains the peace.
SFOR MEMBER INVOLVED IN TRAFFICKING
The report said that an international civilian
member of SFOR reportedly paid $3,200 in November 1999 to a bar owner in
the eastern Serb-held town of Vlasenica for one woman from Romania and
another from Moldova.
``As a member of SFOR, the man was immune from
prosecution by local authorities. For unstated reasons, NATO declined to
waive that immunity,'' the report said.
``On the basis of his misconduct the man was
relieved of his duties and a few days later was barred from the SFOR
area of operations. He left Bosnia and no further action was taken.''
SFOR was not immediately available for comment.
In 1998, NATO dismissed allegations by the Spanish
newspaper El Mundo that its soldiers were involved in child prostitution
and drug trafficking in Bosnia.
U.N. spokesman Douglas Coffman told Reuters it
could not prove allegations against officers of the international police
force. ``Had we been able to prove the allegations we would have
punished them severely,'' he said.
The U.N. report said that most of the suspected
trafficking was reported in or near the country's Serb republic -- which
with the Muslim-Croat federation makes up Bosnia -- in some federation
cantons and the neutral northern Brcko district.
A significant part of the trade was reported at the
vast, unregulated ``Arizona Market'' which has several brothels. It is
in northern Bosnia, on the boundary between the federation and Serb
Republic and near Croatia and Yugoslavia.
``In general, government authorities do not fully
understand the complexities of the trade in human beings nor do they
comprehend its scope. Law enforcement is often complicit, either overtly
or by silence and failure to act,'' the report said.