Throughout the summer and fall of 2013, the Russian government also conducted sweeps of areas with migrant labor, rounded up thousands of migrants, and charged the migrants without screening for indicators of trafficking. Russia is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. The Russian government has signed the Program of Cooperation between CIS Member States against Trafficking in Persons, but to date there have been no specific steps taken toward implementation. As reported over the past five years, Russia is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. During the reporting period, the government did not establish any concrete system for the identification or care of trafficking victims and lacked a victim referral mechanism, though there were reports of victims being identified and provided assistance on an ad hoc basis. According to government officials, the General Procuracy, the Investigative Committee, the Russian Academy for Justice (training of judges), and the Russian Academy of Advocacy (training of lawyers) also provided periodic training on handling human trafficking cases. In early December 2013, representatives of the prosecutor general’s office announced they had submitted a national anti-trafficking action plan that included a request for authority to appoint an anti-trafficking rapporteur to the Russian Security Council for approval. There were reports that Russian law enforcement was not always cooperative or responsive to investigative requests from foreign governments. According to official statistics, in 2013, an estimated 1.1 million labor migrants were employed in the Moscow region alone. “The Borgen Project is an incredible nonprofit organization that is addressing poverty and hunger and working towards ending them.” After, they took their passports and forced them to work off their debt, AKA human trafficking. 7 min read. The trafficking is multidimensional and it involves both commercial sexual exploitation and labor exploitation. Government-funded victim care was not available for the vast majority of trafficking victims in the country, and victims were routinely deported and detained with no effort to identify them or refer them to care. Their definition of slavery includes forced prostitution, labor and marriage. Types of Human Trafficking & Forms of Exploitation 21 1.1.3. Out of all these cases, only 38 traffickers received convictions as of 2013. Here are 10 facts about human trafficking in Russia. Go to the current State.gov website for up-to-date information. Russia has as many as 12 million foreign workers -- many from Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan -- and they sometimes fall victim to forced labor, abuse, and sex trafficking. Also in 2013, Russian citizens were reportedly victims of sex trafficking in many countries, including in Northeast Asia, Europe, Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Russian authorities reported that a December 2013 amendment to the law on state protection of victims, witnesses, and other participants in criminal proceedings expanded the rights of crime victims, including through damage compensation and notice to victims on the release of convicts. According to official government statistics, nearly 5,000 foreigners who entered on Fan IDs remained unlawfully in Russia at the beginning of 2019, including 1,863 Nigerians. In 2013, law enforcement agencies registered 66 reports of crimes of trafficking in persons, of which 63 were for the purpose of sexual exploitation. What lead to it was wild capitalism, demand, and debt. Unofficial reports confirmed sentences of a few months’ to 13 years’ imprisonment, slightly higher than last year’s range of up to 12 years’ imprisonment. Iranian officials often condoned crimes. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. The Russian authorities reportedly collaborated with some foreign law enforcement bodies on the investigation of transnational trafficking cases. The government detained and deported hundreds of migrant workers, many of whom were vulnerable to human trafficking, without any reported efforts to identify them as trafficking victims. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views contained therein. child sex trafficking in russia It is estimated that among 80,000 to 130,000 sex trade victims in Moscow, 20 to 25% are minors. Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, Counterterrorism & Countering Violent Extremism, Western Hemisphere (Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada), Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Trafficking in Persons 2014 Report: Country Narratives, Business Support: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. Sex trafficking occurs in brothels, hotels, and saunas, among other locations. Many of these migrant workers experienced exploitative labor conditions characteristic of trafficking cases, such as withholding of documents, nonpayment for services rendered, physical abuse, or extremely poor living conditions. This chapter describes the cause of prostitution in Russia in the 1990s. Russia has one of the worst worldwide records in fighting forced labor and sex trafficking, according to an annual report from a U.S. government anti-trafficking agency. Russia has developed into a major hub for human trafficking. A large number of immigrant and local women are often exploited for sex while men are forced to work in oil mines. Note: documents in Portable Document Format (PDF) require Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or higher to view. Information released online from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017. Previous promises of creating an interagency committee to address human trafficking were not fulfilled. There were also reports of children and women from European (predominantly Ukraine and Moldova), Southeast Asian (primarily Vietnam), African, and Central Asian countries being forced into prostitution in Russia. Articles 127.1 and 127.2 of the Russian criminal code prohibit both sex trafficking and forced labor, although they also cover non-trafficking offenses. According to … Develop formal national procedures to guide law enforcement and other government officials, including labor inspectors and health officials, in identification and referral of victims to service providers; allocate funding to state bodies and anti-trafficking NGOs to provide specialized trafficking victim assistance and rehabilitative care; establish a national rapporteur to be a central coordinator for the Russian government’s response to trafficking; create a national anti-trafficking action plan; increase efforts to identify and assist both sex and labor trafficking victims, particularly among exploited labor migrants in Russia; implement a formal policy to ensure identified victims of trafficking are not punished or detained in deportation centers for acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked; ensure that victims have access to legal alternatives to deportation to countries where they face hardship or retribution; increase the number of investigations, prosecutions, and convictions for trafficking offenses, and investigate and criminally punish government officials complicit in trafficking; create a central repository for investigation, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing data for trafficking cases; increase efforts to raise public awareness of both sex and labor trafficking; and take steps to investigate allegations and prevent the use of forced labor in construction projects and North Korean-operated labor camps. Labor trafficking remains the predominant human trafficking problem within Russia, accelerating in the context of Russia’s significant increase in labor migration. Efforts to crack down on human trafficking in Russia focus not only on the men, women, and children who are illegally shipped out of Russia to undergo forced labor and sexual exploitation in other countries, but also those who are illegally brought into Russia from abroad. According to official government statistics, nearly 5,000 foreigners who entered on Fan IDs remained unlawfully in Russia at the beginning of 2019, including 1,863 Nigerians. It is a destination country for migrant labor from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, making it second in the world for migration. In the 1990s, there were job ads in other countries from Russia for good jobs. 1.1. In 2013, at least 28 trafficking offenders were convicted under Article 127.1, the article typically used for sex trafficking crimes, and four traffickers were convicted of the use of slave labor under Article 127.2, compared with a total of 29 people convicted under Article 127.1 and five convicted under Article 127.2 in 2012. Instances of labor trafficking have been reported in the construction, manufacturing, agriculture, grocery store, maritime, and domestic service industries, as well as in forced begging, waste sorting, and street sweeping; trafficking also continued to be prevalent in textile and garment factories. Prosecutions remained low compared with estimates of Russia’s trafficking problem. Routes, Organisers, and Human Trafficking Victims 23 1.2. The Trafficking in Persons Report, or the TIP Report, is an annual report issued by the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.It ranks governments based on their perceived efforts to acknowledge and combat human trafficking. In several such cases involving foreign victims in one region of Russia, police chose to deport these individuals instead of prosecuting the traffickers. Human Rights Watch reports that construction of facilities for major events drew estimated tens of thousands of migrant laborers to Russia. There were also reports that Russian authorities deported Nigerian and Kenyan sex trafficking victims in 2013 without any investigation into the crime, despite the victims’ fear of retribution in their home countries. Amongst the most trusted sources for understanding the global situation is the research by the International Labour Organization (ILO).. Although labor trafficking remains the predominant human trafficking problem within Russia, sex trafficking … Russia is a significant source of women trafficked to over 50 nations. Russian authorities report they often charge sex trafficking cases under Articles 241 and 240, addressing the inducement to and organization of prostitution, as the elements of those crimes are often easier to prove; there is no public information on how many such cases involved forced as opposed to voluntary prostitution. 25.Nov.2020 9:00 AM . The government did not report any specific measures to ensure that its military personnel, when deployed abroad as part of peacekeeping or other similar missions, did not engage in or facilitate human trafficking. The Security Council did not announce a decision on this request. Moscow Ignoring Most Of Over 500,000 Cases Of Human Trafficking In Russia – OpEd Russia’s 2016 Statistics: In 2016, the Global Slavery Index reported that there were more than one million human trafficking victims in Russia. By comparison, the government investigated 70 sex trafficking and 17 labor trafficking cases in 2012. Note: Content in this archive site is not updated, and links may not function. Yet, in 2013, just 28 people were … Human trafficking is one of the most critical humanitarian issues of the century and virtually operates everywhere in the world. As of 2016, the Global Slavery Index estimated that over a million people were victims of human trafficking in Russia. By a trafficker. During the reporting period, an international organization opened a trafficking shelter in space granted by a municipal government in St. Petersburg. They were also involved in recruiting children to fight for Iranian-led militias in Syria and forcing adults and children into the commercial sex trade. Efforts to crack down on human trafficking in Russia focus not only on the men, women, and children who are illegally shipped out of Russia to undergo forced labor and sexual exploitation in other countries, but also those who are illegally brought into Russia from abroad. During the reporting period, the former chief of the Criminal Investigation Unit of a police precinct in the Chuvash Republic, who had provided protection to a trafficking ring, received two suspended sentences of eight years’ and four years’ imprisonment. The government reportedly prosecuted at least 18 defendants in seven cases of sex trafficking and at least ten defendants in four cases of forced labor in 2013, compared with twenty-two sex trafficking prosecutions and ten labor trafficking prosecutions in 2012. 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