Child trafficking in Serbia: Professional's perspectives, experiences, and challenges

Abstract

In Serbia, children account for nearly half of all identified trafficking victims in recent years, a figure that significantly exceeds both European and global averages (CPTV, 2023; 2024; ASTRA et al., 2024; EUROSTAT, 2025; UNODC, 2024). While the country has formal anti-trafficking structures in place, including a multidisciplinary team (MDT) framework and a national referral mechanism, coordination among responsible institutions remains inconsistent and child-specific services are largely absent (GRETA, 2023; ASTRA et al., 2024; U.S. Department of State, 2025). Existing research relies primarily on institutional statistics and policy reports (CPTV, 2021-2025; GRETA, 2023; U.S. Department of State, 2025), and how frontline professionals actually experience this work remains poorly understood. This qualitative study examines the perspectives and experiences of ten professionals involved in Serbia's child anti-trafficking response, including MDT members, NGO workers, child protection specialists, and anti-trafficking coordinators. Using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis guided by Braun and Clarke's (2006) framework, the study explores how professionals perceive current trafficking trends and vulnerabilities, how they navigate cross-institutional coordination, how they apply child rights-based principles in daily practice, and what challenges they encounter across ecological levels. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory (1979, 1986), the Child Rights-Based Approach (UNICEF, 2018; UNCRC, 1989), and the principles of multidisciplinary collaboration (ILO, 2006), the findings show that professionals understand child trafficking not as an isolated event, but as a process shaped by interacting factors at the individual, family, community, institutional, and systemic levels. Identification remains one of the most fragile stages in the response, and child rights-based practice functions more as a personal professional orientation than a consistently implemented standard. Serbia's MDT is widely seen as essential, yet its functioning is frequently undermined by unclear roles, limited resources, staff turnover, inconsistent coordination, and heavy reliance on NGOs to fill gaps left by the state (GRETA, 2023; ASTRA et al., 2024; U.S. Department of State, 2025). A theme that emerged across interviews was the range of professional strengths and capacities that allow frontline workers to sustain quality responses despite structural constraints, including accountability to children, adaptivity, holistic thinking, and a strengths-based orientation toward the children they work with. Participants' recommendations consistently pointed to the need for MDT strengthening, decentralisation of local teams, specialised child-specific services, stable state funding, and legal reform backed by real accountability. The study concludes that protecting children from trafficking in Serbia requires more than formal structures on paper. It calls for responses that are preventive, child-centred, adequately resourced, and genuinely accountable, where children are approached not merely as victims, but as rights-holders whose dignity, safety, and recovery matter in practice (UNICEF, 2018; UNCRC, 1989).