DSC02669Migration and trafficking resource center of Armenian Caritas gathered the organizations providing hot-line service on trafficking at the roundtable. The meeting aimed at summarizing implemented efforts, sharing experience and observations, as well as identifying ways to foster cooperation among the participant organizations for solving the existing issues.

DSC02669Migration and trafficking resource center of Armenian Caritas gathered the organizations providing hot-line service on trafficking at the roundtable. The meeting aimed at summarizing implemented efforts, sharing experience and observations, as well as identifying ways to foster cooperation among the participant organizations for solving the existing issues.
Hot-line service 8212 provided by Armenian Caritas operates since November 2012. The center lawyer Nonna Margaryan mentioned that the majority of calls were made by those citizens who wanted to leave the country. According to Ms. Margaryan this is a positive indicator as the citizens of Armenia want to be informed about illegal migration in order to escape the risks. In the reporting period the center did not receive any call connected to the trafficking cases.
The representative of the organization “UMCOR” Victoria Avakova also mentioned that only 20% of calls that they received is directly connected to trafficking; in DSC02694the other cases the citizens are interested in the legal ways of migration. The representative of the NGO “Hope and Help” Mery Grigoryan mentioned that the peculiarity of the service provided by their NGO and US embassy is the fact that in the majority of cases students apply them.
The organizations also shared the cases revealing dangerous practices caused by migration. According to the program manager of «Migration and trafficking recourse center» Movses Hakobyan the number of cases connected to money extortion under the pretext of legal migration was raised. He mentioned that in the center there were registered such cases connected with those citizens who want to leave for Canada. Mr. Hakobyan stressed the importance of cooperation among the organizations in the fights against such phenomena.
During the meeting there were also discussed increase of immigration and its causes; particularly there was spoken about those migrants who leave Armenia because of health problems. The phenomenon of «Mortal diagnosis» is widely spread in Armenia, when Armenian doctors tell the patients about their severe disease which can be treated with great difficulties. The doctors advise the patients to apply to foreign professors «if they want to live».
DSC02673Another alarming phenomenon is observed in Russia when Armenian citizens are rejected to enter the country at the very border. What makes the situation even worse is that no record of rejection are made in the passports and only after returning and making queries it turns out that they were deported.
At the end of the meeting the participants decided to increase the frequency of such meetings and to develop referral mechanisms for more efficiency of the hot line services.
The representatives of the following organizations took part in the meeting: «UMCOR», «Hope and Help» NGO, «People in Need» BNGO , US embassy Department of human trafficking prevention, International Center for Human Development (ICHD) , French-Armenian development Foundation , «Democracy Today» NGO .

The meeting was organized in the frame of the «Migration and Trafficking Resource Center» project , which is financed by Caritas France. The center is formed for promotion and dissemination of information on legal ways of migration, as well as for supporting the victims of trafficking.