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Welcoming Speech

Dear guests,
a cordial welcome to all of you here in Soest.

My name is Birgit Reiche and I’m working as woman pastor with the Evangelische Frauenhilfe of the district of Westfalia and I am executive of the advice centre Nadeshda in the town of Herford.

During our meeting, until tomorrow afternoon, we will deal with two main topics, causing major social problems in Europe and worldwide and causing great hardship and suffering and often death to the people concerned: I am talking about HIV / AIDS and human trafficking for sexual exploitation.

We are happy to welcome guests from all over Germany, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. I am speaking on behalf of the organisers of this conference, namely the Diakonische Werk Rheinland, Westfalen und Lippe - the Social Service Agency of Rhineland, Westphalia and Lippe, the Netzwerk „Le Pont“ network, the Amt für Mission, Ökumene und kirchliche Weltverantwortung der Evangelischen Kirche von Westfalen, the ministry of Mission, ecumenism and religious responsibility of the Protestant Church of Westphalia and the Evangelische Frauenhilfe in Westfalen e.V. with its advice centre Nadeschda.

Seven, five and three years ago there have already been networking conferences here in Soest, and a number of you present today have already participated then. I hope you will now find the chance to deepen the exchange that you begun then and to establish some new contacts.

But some of you amongst us take part in this meeting for the first time and I hope it will be profitable for you and the new contacts you will establish here can be of effective use to your work.

During tonight’s reception you have the opportunity of getting to know each other and of exchange of Ideas and knowledge on an informal basis. And I do hope, that the representatives of the German authorities, who are only here for this day today, will be able to make good use of these exchange opportunities, before they have to leave the conference.

We choose human trafficking and HIV / STD as main issue for this year's conference, because in recent years more and more victims of human trafficking come to the advice centres in a very poor health condition. Many of them are seriously ill with sexually transmitted diseases, some infected with HIV, many addicted to drugs.
We are aware of the fact that the infection rates in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe rise dramatically. Nevertheless, still many prostitution customers require unprotected sexual intercourse. Thus we have headlines in yellow-press as well as political magazines, on television and other press releases about a prostitute at the German-Czech border, who died of AIDS a few month ago and who infected a number of punters with the HI-virus.

Headings such as "cruel receipt for Rozas love services" hint at least at a hidden malicious joy. And the call of the Saxonian office of Social Affairs for prostitution customers to undergo HIV testing reflects on a certain helplessness.

It’s not our aim to further stigmatize prostitutes and victims of human trafficking. But we wish to enhance the experts knowledge and to strengthen international exchange about treatment and prevention. Many victims have to return to their countries of origin, even though they are infected and health treatment in their countries is poor. For some of them a much faster death sentence.

This morning, like on our last conference, we are glad to have a lecture by detective chief superintendent Heidi Rall, from the German Federal Criminal Police Office. She’ll report on the development of human trafficking in recent years after the larger Eastern European expansion of the EU.

After that, detective chief superintendent Heinrich Minzel presents the Dortmund model for the implementation of the Prostitution Act. In the afternoon we’ll start working on the issue of HIV and STD.

Unfortunately, Dr. Yuri Starowsky was not able to come. So I am very grateful that the medical doctor Dzvenyslava Chajkivska from Ukraine short-termedly agreed to come. She is managing director of the "Andriy-Sheptizkij-Hospital” in Lviv.
The hospital has a hospice-section, which is also open to people with AIDS, she directs the health program of Caritas Ukraine, including a large network of home nursing facilities, which are now integrating HIV/AIDS into their work. And she is a member of the HIV/AIDS Task Force of Caritas Europe. Thank you for being with us, Mrs. Chaikivska.

To conclude, I would like to express my thanks. I thank all participants from Central and Eastern Europe, who took the hardship of the journey to take part in this conference.

I would also like to thank the following institutions, whose financial aid made it possible to invite the Eastern European guests and to take over their travel costs.

These are: the Protestant women's work in Germany, the Protestant Church of Westphalia, the Westphalian “campaign against child prostitution”, "Hope for Eastern Europe" Westphalia and "Hope for Eastern Europe" Rhineland.
I also thank the staff of the MÖWe Office who sacrificed much leisure time in order to translate the lectures into English and Gabriele Walz of the MÖWe and Pastor Antje Lütkemeier for translating during the conference.
And last but not least, I thank the employees of the advice centre Nadeshda, who made contact to the participants and lecturers, often with a lot of power of persuasion, and who put a lot of time and effort in preparing this conference.