Identification of trafficking victims continues to be one of the greatest challenges in anti-trafficking work. There are many different ways that victims exit trafficking, are identified and come into contact with the anti-trafficking framework and their various assistance options. Nevertheless, many victims go unidentified and are consequently subject to continued exploitation or unable to access the rights afforded them under international conventions. The main goal in this study was to disentangle how the identification of trafficked persons takes place in South Eastern Europe as well as situations in which it does not occur and the reasons for this. The study discusses missed opportunities for identification of trafficking victims, including the very real and personal implications for these trafficked individuals, based on interviews with 43 victims of trafficking and 99 key informants in the anti-trafficking sector. This paper is based on fieldwork research conducted in Albania, Serbia and Moldova between 2006 and 2008 and is one of three research papers, which address a range of issues and challenges in the assistance framework in the Balkan and FSU region.
