Children For Rent - Albania

The fall of Communism came later and was more disorderedly in Albania than in any other post-Communist country in Europe . It was accompanied by economic and political chaos, creating a massive unemployment rate, poor livelihood prospects and low levels of education. These factors combined to make many Albanian families vulnerable to renting and selling their children. Greece became the main country where Albanian children were forced to work for traffickers who were not always strangers; they were friends, or were seen as friends. In reality they were just people who had promised to bring money to these families. 90% of children trafficked from Albania to Greece came from a Roma background. Their traditional parents rejected assimilation and were, simultaneously, rejected economically and culturally by the society at large. But there are, of course, no ethnic criteria for recruiting children.