Friday, July 07, 2006 8:44 AM

TIRANA, Albania-International aid agencies have begun a US$3 million (€2.3 million) project to fight child trafficking in Albania and help its tens of thousands of young victims recover, project organizers said Friday.

Most of the effort will be focused on building five shelters to house and educate street children who have been exploited by traffickers and help them return to a normal life.

The project will also involve a public awareness campaign meant to change attitudes about child trafficking in Albania, an impoverished country where parents are sometimes complicit in the exploitation of their children as a way to support the family.

The program is funded by aid groups from Europe and the United States, as well as the United Nations' children's agency, UNICEF, and the Oak Foundation.

Authorities in post-communist Albania have struggled to stop child trafficking and have been criticized for not doing enough. In the past years, the government has done little other than increasing border controls.

One advocacy group, the Children's Human Rights Center of Albania, estimated that between 1998 and 2004, 50,000 children in Albania between the ages of 6 and 14 were forced into begging or prostitution, or made to work in textile factories, construction, fishing or agriculture.

Many of the exploited children are taken abroad, mainly to Greece.

In February, Albania and Greece signed an agreement to repatriate and provide care for child victims. The pact will see children put into the care of the state until adulthood if their families are considered unable to care for them.

The five shelters, to be completed by 2009, will mainly help Gypsy, or Roma, children, who come from one of the poorest segments of society and are often the most vulnerable to traffickers.