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Text of the opening remarks of the Ambassador of Sweden Mr. Robert RYDBERG Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to come here and to address this conference and the opportunity to see with you afterwards one of the most spectacular and most appreciated Swedish films in the last few years by one of the leading directors of the younger generation of Swedish film directors. A film director who is known at the same time as serious, humorous and uplifting. The film that we will be seeing this afternoon is serious but not humorous or uplifting. It is dark, hard and even might say brutal film , but it is no less well done and no less important. It is a film about a young girl from St. Petersburg, very close to Sweden, who with false promises is lured to believe that she will be having a better life in Sweden than she has in Russia at that time, and it become a life worse than the life she had back home in Russia. It is a film about trafficking. It is a film about prostitution. It is an issue which has received very much attention also in the last few years in Sweden as a result of the changes in our region, the fall of the Berlin wall, the fact that it becomes suddenly possible for people, including young people, to travel from the former communist world to the West. As a result of that large numbers of young girls, young women like the girl in the film that we will be seeing have been, by unscroupoulous individuals lured to come to the West including Sweden. In our case mostly young women and girls from Russia and the Baltic States. In other parts of Europe large groups of women from countries like the Former Yugoslavia, Moldova , other nations have come to the West. So the question of trafficking and prostitution is an issue that has received a lot of public and a lot of political attention in Sweden, and we have tried , the political parties, social organizations, women organizations and others have tried to device and work in a very concerted coordinated way to try to track and tackle this problem nationally and internationally. Nationally this has entailed for example a change of our legislation related to prostitution and trafficking. Since very many years ago it has been, as I know it is in Israel a crime for someone to benefit from prostitution of someone else but beyond that we have gone further in our national legislation and actually since about four years that also according to Swedish law it is a crime to go to a prostitute - that is prostitution has been criminalized from the point of view of the client . The client has been criminilized. Experience from the first years of this law has in the evaluation of the police and social agenices been positive. There is a general assessment that the number of prostitutes in Sweden as a result of this legislation has diminished. It is difficult to say of course and give a precise figure but it is clear that it has reduced the number of prostitutes. The number of men that have been taken to court as a result of this crime is relatively small but I think it is a general impression that beyond that the law has a deterrent effect because of the social stigmatization it gives to a person , normally law abiding citizens, who are brought to court for a crime which causes them of course very substantial embarrassment. Beyond that we have also criminalized specifically trafficking in young women and girls for prostitution with rather severe penalty for those who are responsible for this trade - for example from Russia and Eastern Europe. What we have done internationally and this goes back to the Swedish presidency of the European Union in 2002, we have started projects between the EU countries and Asian nations in order to develop a European Asian action program to prevent trafficking in women and young girls and next year probably EU together with African nations likewise will develop an Action Program with Africa to prevent trafficking of women and girls from Africa coming to Europe because this is as we know an international trend and international phenomena which affects countries like Eastern European countries but affects very much countries in South East Asia, West Africa , part of the countries of Latin America and other regions. Thank you very much. |