| July 6, 2010 Trafficked and Unsheltered By Tom Balmforth Russia Profile |
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Legal Obstacles and an Ever-Lacking Action Plan Mean That Russia’s Rehab Centers for Trafficking Victims Are Now Few and Far Between Victims of human trafficking in Russia are being left to fend almost entirely for themselves this year, as support shelters are closed in response to cuts in foreign funding. The Russian government still lacks an action plan on human trafficking, which means it cannot allocate federal funds to keep the centers running, say NGO workers. Last month the U.S. State Department released the 2010 human trafficking report, placing Russia on its “Tier 2 Watch List” of countries for the seventh year in a row. It also reported that the government showed “minimal progress” in fighting government complicity in human trafficking. While minimal progress was made in combating child trafficking in the last year, the overall outlook is bleak for Russia’s trafficking victims. Russia remains “a source, transit, and destination country for men, women and children subjected to trafficking in persons,” according to the 2010 U.S. State Department report, which places Russia on its “Tier 2 - Watch List.” Despite “significant efforts,” Russia remains on the watch list for the seventh consecutive year because the government has still not met the minimum standards outlined in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Moreover “the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing,” although the exact numbers or approximations are not known because of the “underground” nature of trafficking. The watch list category includes 58 countries out of 177, with only ten countries in the category below, which includes Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Forced labor and debt bondage are Russia’s most common forms of trafficking and the report warns the Russian government to finally take measures to prevent it during the mass construction projects envisaged for the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vladivostok and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The report notes that “the government did not support efforts to develop a labor trafficking awareness campaign in advance of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.” Meanwhile Russian women are trafficked across the world to countries ranging from Germany, to the Middle East, to Australia. Enrico Ponziani, the chief of mission at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Moscow, said that Russia had mainly been a “source country” in the nineties, but has since become a transit and destination country as well, for “geo-economic” reasons – i.e. Russia has become more affluent. The State Department finds that women from Africa and Central Asia in particular are trafficked across Russia and subjected to forced prostitution. Meanwhile children from Russia, Ukraine and Moldova are trafficked to Moscow and St. Petersburg where they are subjected to forced begging and prostitution. “Men from Western Europe and the United States travel to Western Russia, specifically St. Petersburg, for the purpose of child sex tourism,” reads the report. In September 2009 an Ombudsmen for Children’s Rights was for the first time appointed in Russia, which “could” become a step toward better prevention of child trafficking. However, the “ombudsman’s mandate currently does not include specific anti-human trafficking responsibilities.” The main problem seems to be the lack of a comprehensive strategy from the Russian government. There are several reasons why there is no government action plan on trafficking, said Ponziani. “They have been trying to work on a national plan, and it’s been going on. It’s not easy – I know of smaller countries that have taken seven, or eight years to do it. For instance, to do it, Russia has to get all the representatives of its republics together…I’m not trying to defend Russia, I’m just saying that Russia – because it’s such a huge country – probably has many more problems to deal with and needs much more time to go through them. But maybe what it needs to do is have more human resources focused on trafficking.” Alena Arlashkina, deputy director of Angel Coalition, an NGO working to rehabilitate trafficking victims in Russia, said one of the reasons for the persistent lack of an action plan could be that “there are no real statistics – a lot of women don’t appeal to rights organizations.” Arlashkina did admit that the lack of a comprehensive strategy was definitely part of the problem. “There are only articles – there is no legislative part. This new legislation has been under discussion for the last five to six years. It has been passed everywhere – in Belarus, in Moldova, in Ukraine, in Tajikistan even.” As a result there is little awareness in Russia of trafficking. Moreover, in the absence of a national strategy, there are no federal funds allocated to human trafficking NGOs in Russia, said Arlashkina, whose Angel Coalition NGO, has now had to cease operations after its foreign grant ran out. Angel Coalition had nine shelters operating in Russia and some in other CIS countries, which worked with women who had been trafficked and rehabilitate them. “Now we have nowhere to put these women. The Angel Coalition used to come and meet them, took them to our shelters, paid for their tickets home, provided them with the help – food, or if we had to, put them up in a hotel. For all this we used to have a grant. Now we cannot do any of this because we don’t have the funding. We can only give counseling to these women by telephone,” said Arlashkina. Some trafficking victims in Russia find state help through tangential state projects – such as one helping street children in St. Petersburg, which receives “modest state funding.” Another one dealing with domestic violence alongside human trafficking in Vladivostok received a modest $3,732 in local government funding. But there are no state-sponsored shelters aimed specifically at the victims of human trafficking, “There still isn’t a state law, which means there are no state centers dealing just with human trafficking,” said Arlashkina, “The only one left is the one in Kazan, and it’s not state – it’s funded by the U.S. State Department on a grant that is due to finish this month.” Russia’s most successful rehabilitation center was run by IOM. Based in Moscow and sponsored by a European Commission (EC) grant with co-funding from the United States, it opened in March 2006. The idea behind the center was to create a model so that the Russian government would take it over when the EC grant ran out in November 2009, or create more centers along similar lines elsewhere. In the three and half years it was operational, the Moscow shelter rehabilitated 423 victims of sex and labor trafficking, dealing with victims from all backgrounds - whether they were Russians registered locally in Moscow or elsewhere in Russia, or foreigners who been trafficked abroad or from abroad. But when it came for the transfer in November 2009, the Russian government failed to allocate funds to keep it going “creating a significant void in the availability of medical, rehabilitative, and reintegration services for trafficking victims,” according to the U.S. State Department report. The explanation for this, said Ponziani, was probably because of “legal funding issues.” Current Russian legislation stipulates that funding can only be allocated at a local level for locally registered Russians facing social problems. As a result, the IOM shelter model which rehabilitated Russians and foreigners, irrespective of place of registration would be legally incompatible in Russia. The way to get round this would probably be for Russia to approve a plan of action and laws to enable the federal government to fund such centers said Ponziani. “Some laws have to go through, which will help these three groups: firstly, people who are registered in the same place as the rehab center; second, Russians who come from a different area; or international victims of trafficking. The only way I can see this being done is through federal funds,” he said. But for those who have been waiting seven years for a Russian action plan on human trafficking, a solution still doesn’t seem to be round the corner.  | |||||||||||
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
RUSSIA PROFILE.ORG
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