On March 5 and 12, Embassy Nicosia brought the issue of trafficking in persons to the attention of over 160 Turkish Cypriot students with a two-night film series at Near East University in Nicosia.  On March 5, over 70 students came out to watch two MTV-produced films: the documentary Inhuman Traffic and the short film Parallel Lives.  The evening began with a short presentation in Turkish by Assistant Public Affairs Officer John Rhatigan, who explained that trafficking is a global problem, amounting to a 7.7 billion Euro industry worldwide. 

After the screening, Embassy Political Officer Amy Dahm explained that in Cyprus, women are often coerced or forced to work in the commercial sex industry.  After explaining best practices for combating trafficking and assisting victims, Ms. Dahm then took questions and answers from the audience.  The evening's program concluded with a discussion by Mine Yucel of Prologue Consulting about the results her research project that mapped out the problem of traffic specific to the Turkish Cypriot Community.  Yucel had been awarded a grant from the Embassy's Bicommunal Support Program. 

One week later, an even larger of audience of over 80 students turned out on March 12 to watch the dramatic feature film Human Trafficking and to continue the growing dialogue about the trafficking problem in Cyprus.