24/10/2007 President
Strasbourg, 24.10.2007 - The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), René van der Linden, today welcomed the 10th ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings (CETS n° 197), by Cyprus, which will trigger its entry into force on 1 February 2008 (*).
“I urge all the Council of Europe member states, whether they are countries of origin, transit or destination, to sign and/or ratify the Convention if they have not yet done so” Mr van der Linden. “National parliaments have a major responsibility for ensuring that this Convention is ratified as widely as possible, thus making it possible put in place a pan-European system for prosecuting traffickers and protecting the victims”, he added. He also called on the European Union to ratify the text.
Finally, Mr van der Linden stressed the need for independence of the Convention’s monitoring mechanism (GRETA) and called for sufficient funding to be made available to it.
In 2002, in its Recommendation 1545, the PACE had asked the Committee of Ministers to draw up a European convention on trafficking in women that would be open to non-member states.
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(*) is the 10th state to have ratified the Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings. The Convention will enter into force on in the countries that have ratified it (, , , , , , , , and ).