Success stories

Combating the Trafficking in Human Beings

Client:

European Commission - Justice and Home Affairs DG

Year:

2002

Aims:

The European Commission wanted to get as much publicity as possible for the 18-20^th September Conference on Human Trafficking, organised as part of the STOP programme of the Justice and Home Affairs Directorate-General, headed by the European Commissioner Antonio Vitorino. A specific aim was to ensure major coverage of this issue by broadcasters in the victims' home countries.

Solutions:

To ensure maximum coverage on the television channels, Mostra produced a series of exclusive documentaries, based on field investigations in countries which generally receive little attention by European broadcasters.

Our TV journalists went to Serbia, Romania and Moldavia, as well as to various EU Member-States, to follow the routes covered by the victims of traffickers and to accompany local law enforcement officials' raids on trafficking rings. We produced three complementary documentaries to illustrate the three main themes of the conference: «The plight of modern-day slaves», «Victim's testimony - key to arrest of criminals», «Can trafficking in human beings be prevented?».

We also identified, invited and directly assisted some twenty television journalists from the countries of origin of the trafficking in human beings. Without this facility it would have been impossible for them to be able to afford full coverage of the issue. For the success of the initiative, it was very important for them to show their audiences that the subject is being discussed at the highest level in Brussels.

The Conference was covered by all the major European television channels, as well as those from Central and East Europe. On 18 and 19th September 2002, the images shot by Mostra were, after editing by journalists from the various channels, seen by the huge audiences of channels such as BBC World, BBC1, CNN International, EuroNews, France 2, France 3, ARD, ZDF, RTL 2, RAI, ARTE, and many more..

On the eve of the conference, the images filmed by Mostra were distributed by Reuters Television to about 400 television channels across the world.