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From its policy of silence on human trafficking, the passage of a number of laws aimed at closing shelters that assist trafficking victims, and the promotion of government-sponsored media that politicize trafficking, it is clear that the Russian government views human trafficking as layered in political controversies. The international organization noted migrants who were not able to complete the permit process were increasingly vulnerable to labor exploitation and trafficking due to their lack of proper documentation. Spanish police arrest 7 for human-trafficking. Instances of labor trafficking have been reported in the construction, manufacturing, logging, textile, and maritime industries, as well as in saw mills, agriculture, sheep farms, grocery and retail stores, restaurants, waste sorting, street sweeping, domestic service, and forced begging. In a new report, the U.S. State Department says Belarus, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan remain among the worst offenders of human trafficking and forced labor. The government did not consistently provide comprehensive information on prosecution efforts, but the limited available data and media reports suggest prosecutions remained low compared with the scope of Russia’s trafficking problem. 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In Russia, where an estimated one million people are living in what’s known as modern slavery, the politicized nature of human trafficking is also evident but deployed differently, as the Russian government has made the task of assisting trafficking victims a political one. According to an international organization, children of migrant workers are vulnerable to forced labor in informal sectors. Observers note migrant laborers are also vulnerable to sex trafficking. According to press reports, 2.3 million Ukrainians resided in Russia, including more than one million who went east to escape Russian aggression in Ukraine. Articles 127.1 (trafficking in persons) and 127.2 (use of slave labor) of the criminal code criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking. However, the government reported at least 1,000 DPRK workers remained in the country at the end of January 2020. Article 127.2 prescribed penalties of up to five years’ prison labor or up to five years’ imprisonment for offenses involving an adult victim, and up to five years’ prison labor or three to 10 years imprisonment for those involving a child victim. Employers sometimes bribe Russian officials to avoid enforcement of penalties for engaging illegal workers. It is a transit and destination country to a lesser extent. NGOs estimated the number of victims to be in the thousands. A presentation by Kirill Boychenko, a 2012 Carr Center Fellow working with the Program on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. Instead of reporting on the TIP Report Hero Award, the Russian media focused on other issues, including U.S. government accusations that the Russian government is not fighting human trafficking and its threats of sanctions for those assigned Tier 3 status. In Russia, where an estimated one million people are living in what’s known as modern slavery, the politicized nature of human trafficking is also evident but deployed differently, as the Russian government has made the task of assisting trafficking victims a political one. Instead, the media focused on the report’s accusations that Russian-led separatists utilized children as young as 12 as informants and human shields in the Ukrainian conflict, the methodology of the report, and the stereotypes of Russia it claimed were perpetuated in the report. The government maintained a readmission agreement with the EU to assist in the repatriation of Russian trafficking victims, but did not keep official statistics on how many victims it assisted in this way; NGOs reported authorities referred few returning victims to them for services. • Amend the criminal code to include a definition of trafficking that is consistent with the definition of trafficking under international law. One day, Lilja falls in love with Andrej, who is going to … While these raids took place with some regularity, the use of undocumented or forced labor remained widespread due to complacency and corruption. Authorities conducted scheduled and unannounced audits of firms employing foreign laborers to check for violations of immigration and labor laws—with penalties in the form of revoking foreign worker permits. • Allocate funding to state bodies and anti-trafficking NGOs to provide specialized assistance and rehabilitative care to victims. Authorities reportedly prosecuted Russian citizens returning from Syria and Iraq, where some were subjected to trafficking, under anti-terror laws without being screened for indicators of trafficking. Russia did not have a national action plan; legislation that would implement a coordination framework continued to languish at the highest levels within the presidential administration. (2004). Russian women and children are reportedly victims of sex trafficking in Russia and abroad, including in Northeast Asia, Europe, Central Asia, Africa, the United States, and the Middle East. • Create a national anti-trafficking action plan and establish a central coordinator for government efforts. While the use of slave labour is criminalised under article 127.2 and article 127.1 mentions slave labour as a type of exploitation as part of the crime of human trafficking, the act of slavery itself is not distinctly criminalised.58 Articles 240 and 241 address recruitment into sex work and pimping.59 In relation to the alleged exploitation of migrant workers from North Korea on the construction site for the St Petersburg stadium for the 2018 S… International organizations estimate up to 40 percent of these migrants were working unofficially and vulnerable to both forced labor and sex trafficking; most identified victims of forced begging in recent years are Ukrainian. Inventory and Analysis of the Current Situation and Responses Author/publisher Elena .V. Human trafficking is just another name for modern-day slavery, wherein the victims involved are forced, coerced and deceived into labour and sexual exploitation. If you are a victim of trafficking or know someone who i… However, during the report period there was a government policy or pattern of forced labor; the total number of victims identified by the government remained negligible compared with the estimated scope of the issue; and authorities routinely penalized potential victims, including by detaining and deporting potential forced labor victims for immigration violations and prosecuting sex trafficking victims for prostitution offenses, without screening for signs of trafficking. The Russian Code here defined human trafficking as: “The buying-selling of a person or other actions committed for the purpose of such person’s exploitation in the form of recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of such a person.” Article 127.2 against slavery was later added. Pope Francis sends a message to an online seminar on human trafficking, and calls this form of modern-day slavery a scourge against human dignity. As in previous years, the government made no efforts to develop public awareness of forced labor or sex trafficking and provided no funds to NGOs to carry out prevention and awareness campaigns. • Given significant concerns that North Korea forces its citizens to work abroad, screen North Korean workers, students, and tourists for trafficking indicators and refer them to appropriate services. 1.1. Interviews conducted in Russia in 2012–2013 with key stakeholders in the anti-trafficking movement demonstrated how the issue of human trafficking had become politicized as a result of outside pressure to adopt policies and of Western intervention in Russian internal politics. Authorities did not routinely screen potential victims seeking assistance at these shelters for trafficking indicators; in prior years, the shelters provided medical and psychiatric aid, and referred victims to international NGOs and other homeless shelters located in many of Russia’s regions. Women and children from Europe (predominantly Ukraine and Moldova), Southeast Asia (primarily China and the Philippines), Africa (particularly Nigeria), and Central Asia are victims of sex trafficking in Russia. Based on our research of 692 articles on human trafficking published in the Russian media since 1997, it is not surprising that with Russia’s low rating, the Russian media would not cover the TIP Report release. We believe that this demonstrates how political the issue of human trafficking in Russia has become. With Lynne Adams, Zoe Aggeliki, Isabelle Blais, Céline Bonnier. Statistics are scarce, but data from Russia's Interior Ministry obtained by The Moscow Times contained about 900 cases of human trafficking, … A shelter “for women in difficult life situations,” run by the Russian Orthodox Church, continued to accept victims and offered them food, housing, and psychological care, although not medical assistance; the government did not provide financial support for the shelter. The government did not report screening specifically for indicators of trafficking, but media reports indicated the children received counseling. There are reports of Russian citizens facing forced labor abroad. This paper elucidates the nuances of human trafficking, and the methods and mechanisms by which traffickers function, and people are trafficked. There are reports of widespread forced labor in brick factories in the Dagestan region. 2. Women from Russia’s North Caucasus region as well as women from Central Asia residing in Russia have been recruited to join ISIS through online romantic relationships and are subjected to exploitation once they arrive. Further, the government’s efforts to exert pressure on NGOs through the implementation of restrictive laws also targeted those providing protective services for trafficking victims; the government previously designated two locally registered NGOs working on trafficking issues as “foreign agents” and NGO employees who criticized the government’s anti-trafficking efforts reported receiving verbal threats. A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons launched today by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) provides new information on a crime that shames us all. Our research on the media framing of human trafficking revealed that the latest event in this unfolding political saga was the U.S. Department of State’s presenting its TIP Report Heroes Award the first time to a person working in Russia, while the Russian media remained largely silent on the award. JetSmarter is under investigation for Russian mob ties, and Smart Jet for trafficking girls into misery, rape and death. Media reports in the past revealed the government sometimes prosecuted as trafficking cases involving baby-selling, a crime that falls outside the international definition of trafficking. However, inconsistent with the definition of trafficking under international law, these articles established the use of force, fraud, or coercion as aggravating factors, rather than essential elements of the crime. The winner of the TIP Report Hero Award from Russia, unveiled on June 30, 2016, by Secretary of State John Kerry, is Oluremi Banwo Kekhinde, a Nigerian-born activist living in Russia who helps Nigerians and other immigrants from Africa who are victims of human trafficking in Russia. The government offered no funding or programs for trafficking victims’ rehabilitation; authorities lacked a process for the identification of victims and their referral to care. An estimated 200 children had returned to Russia since this program first became public in 2017; media reports indicated the … Associated Press AP, Madrid, Spain, 7 April 2007 Authorities continued to prosecute suspected traffickers under commercial sex and pimping statutes, but did not report data on the frequency of these prosecutions. While the letters offered no official status to the migrants, they allowed victims to remain in the Moscow region without risk of deportation or prosecution while police investigated their trafficking case. The “Yarovaya” package of anti-terror laws made it a crime for individuals or organizations to provide material assistance to people considered to be in Russia illegally; authorities could prosecute NGOs who assisted unlawfully present victims of trafficking. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. Observers noted authorities often did not recognize foreign victims as such when they were unlawfully present in Russia, which resulted in the penalization of foreign victims rather than their referral to care. In December 2019, the supreme court issued a clarification on cases including trafficking in persons that highlighted the criminal liability of those who recruit victims into trafficking situations, which experts hoped would increase the use of the criminal code to prosecute and convict traffickers. Problems of Post-Communism: Vol. Types of Human Trafficking & Forms of Exploitation 21 1.1.3. Russia is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (police), since 2004, when human trafficking was criminalized in Russia, sixty-six crimes involving trade in humans were registered in Russia; however, only twenty-six criminal investigations were initiated, and twelve people were sentenced by the courts. Unfortunately, Armenia also faces this burning problem. The government publicly reported prosecuting two defendants in a single case for sex trafficking under article 127.1. The government did not develop or employ a formal system to guide officials in proactive identification of victims or their referral to available services, nor did it have a program to protect or support victims who participated in the investigation or prosecution of their alleged traffickers. Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar business and one of the fastest-growing illegal industries on the planet. Anton is one of 794,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in the Russian Federation today. Despite reports that the government ceased issuing new work permits to North Korean laborers, observers noted many laborers continued to enter the country via fraudulent channels to work informally, for example by obtaining tourist or student visas, which increased their vulnerability to trafficking. Since 2003, there have not been any additional laws passed surrounding human trafficking in Russia. 152 nationalities have been trafficked to 124 nations. Human Trafficking is different to People Smuggling: 1. Sex camming in and of itself is on the rise. Routes, Organisers, and Human Trafficking Victims 23 1.2. A February 2016 agreement between Russia and the DPRK enabled Russian authorities to deport North Koreans residing “illegally” in Russia, possibly even those with refugee status; this may increase the risk of labor trafficking for North Koreans working under the state-to-state agreement. They're a profitable commodity in the multi-billion-dollar industry of modern slavery. This does not account for the numbers that are trafficked within their own […] Bipartisan support of anti-trafficking initiatives in the United States disguises the controversial nature of human trafficking, which is “rooted in global patterns of economic and political injustice.” Instead of being recognized as a moral issue that requires politicians to “rise above” political calculations, human trafficking is linked to such controversial topics as national security, illegal immigration, and prostitution. 6, pp. Traffickers use social media to recruit, monitor, and control victims. • Ensure screening among children returned from Iraq and Syria for child soldiering indicators and provide them with rehabilitation and reintegration support. The government issued 16,613 tourist and 10,345 student visas to North Koreans in 2019, compared with 2,035 tourist and 2,610 student visas in 2018. 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