Human Trafficking in the CIS

The collapse of the USSR and creation of the CIS have led to massive population movements, reflecting rising unemployment, growing poverty, ‘transparent’ borders, political instability and military conflicts. There are no reliable statistical data to estimate the scale of the phenomenon, but it appears that these migration trends are likely to continue. Indeed, due to growing demographic imbalances among the CIS states (populations are declining in the Russian Federation and the Western CIS countries while growing in Central Asia and parts of the Caucasus) as well as differences in living standards, they might even intensify.

Experts estimate that there are 4.5-5.0 million citizens from other CIS countries working illegally in the Russian Federation. These include up to 1.5 million from the Caucasus, up to 1 million each from Ukraine and the countries of Central Asia, and 200,000 to 300,000 from Moldova. In addition, an estimated 250,000-500,000 migrants (mostly from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan) work in Kazakhstan. By contrast, the number of work permits issued to migrants from other CIS countries by the Russian authorities was 221,900 (in 2004), and just 11,800 in Kazakhstan (in 2002). The bulk of migration in the CIS is therefore unregulated or illegal. As migrant labourers employed in the informal economy, these workers are among the most vulnerable social groups in the region. They are too likely to fall victim to human trafficking—a distinct form of migration that combines legal and illegal elements to produce extreme forms of exploitation. As such, trafficking is grossly incompatible with human development and human rights.

Expert estimates indicate that the extent of human trafficking within the CIS is many times greater than the trafficking of CIS citizens outside the region. They also indicate that ‘normal’ human trafficking seems to dwarf trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, although the latter also occurs. The data from CIS countries do not support the view that human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is the main form of contemporary trafficking.

The Root Causes of Human Trafficking and their Replication Mechanisms

Over the last five years, the majority of the CIS countries have ratified the Palermo Protocol (2000) and have criminalized human trafficking. Nevertheless, most of their efforts are devoted to fighting the symptoms of trafficking rather than their causes. The growth of the slave trade results from poverty, which encourages the pursuit of individual survival strategies that involve significant risks of being trapped in exploitation, dependency or slavery. Equally, there is a risk that human trafficking will spread across the working population. At the end of 2003 the average monthly salary ranged from $16.6 in Tajikistan, $42.0 in Kyrgyzstan, $60.0 in Armenia and Georgia, $162.0 in Kazakhstan to $202.0 in Russia. Low salaries lead to mass poverty of the working population (the so-called ‘new poor’). Even households with two working adults are under threat.

This challenges traditional approaches to combating trafficking that focus on narrow ‘target groups’ or ‘risk groups’. The groups at highest risk of becoming prey to exploitation and violence include: migrants, rural residents, the disabled, women, the elderly, children from disadvantaged families and orphans. The most common forms of risky behaviour in the region are linked to labour in the informal sector, illegal immigration, marginal occupations (prostitution, begging, participation in gangs, etc.), ‘mail-order brides’ (including via email), and the like. It is in these areas that human traffickers offer their ‘services’ to prospective victims. The most common instruments by which traffickers force their victims into dependence include: seizure of documents, debt bondage, taking advantage of migrants’ illegal status, isolation, restricting movement and social interaction, threats, blackmail, and physical violence.1 These exploitative practices are especially common in migrant populations, many of whom do not have proper work permits.

Between 10 and 50 per cent of the populations of CIS countries are employed in the informal economy. This presents a huge social risk area and a breeding ground for various forms of human exploitation, including outright slavery2. The risk lies not only in the possibility that a person will be forcibly subjected to exploitation, but also that a person will accept conditions of exploitation incompatible with basic human rights and decent working conditions just in order to survive or get ahead. This ‘consent to exploitation’ plays a special role in models of risk behaviour. For example, migrants from Tajikistan, Moldova and other countries coming to Russia in search of jobs often face dire economic circumstances at home (the average per capita income in Tajikistan in 2000 was $0.2 per day). For these migrants the ‘consent to exploitation’ often gives them a competitive edge in the job market.

As a result of such practices in these countries, double standards are forming: conditions that are unacceptable for native workers become acceptable for migrants. International and national legislation (on labour, human rights, and fair competition) is supposed to protect society from these double standards. But in the CIS countries the rule of law is too weak to prevent the demand for cheap labour from translating into forced labour and slavery, especially in the informal economy and among migrants. The growth in slave-working practices and ‘consent to exploitation’ by growing parts of the population legitimise exploitation and violence, and compromise social standards.

Slavery and exploitation are therefore not just the consequence of poverty in a broad sense but are factors in its spread and transfer to the next generation. In many CIS countries child poverty exceeds the average national poverty level. The highest poverty risk is borne by the families of many children that are a characteristic of Central Asia and the Caucasus, especially in rural areas. Children raised in the poorest families too often do not attend school and lack access to basic social services. They are forced to work and can easily become objects of various forms of exploitation in prostitution, pornography, begging and crime. The first half of the 1990s witnessed growth in the number of abandoned children, and the consequent growth of child prostitution and labour exploitation. By the middle of this decade these children will be approaching working age. Many are likely to join the ranks of adult slaves.

Exploitation in the Structure of the Socio-Economic Relations

To understand the nature of contemporary slavery and exploitation, we need to focus not only on the factors that contribute to human trafficking and risk group formation, but also on the features of contemporary economic and migratory regimes that facilitate or enable exploitation. Whereas the former approach is widely adopted in the analysis of human trafficking, the latter has received scarce attention.
When people have limited development prospects, human traffickers can use shortcomings in social service provision to offer potential victims exactly what they need but can not obtain through official channels. For instance, elderly persons are offered assistance at home in exchange for surrendering their homes upon their death. The disabled are induced to beg in exchange for the ‘support and protection’ which they do not receive from the state. Young women looking for a foreign partner are assisted by ‘dating services’ that lead them into the hands of the traffickers. Workers seeking employment abroad are offered job placements that turn out to be slavery. These fraudulent services thrive in the gaps of the official social service infrastructure, and reflect the inability of the state, and/or legitimate private service providers, to offer social protection. This vacuum is filled by semi-official, shadow and criminal agents offering a wide menu ranging from illicit jobs and illegal immigration to recruitment into terrorist and drug trafficking organisations.

The socio-economic factors and mechanisms that promote trafficking and other forms of exploitation in CIS countries include:

• The excessive regulation of labour and other markets that push otherwise normal commercial activities into the informal sector, where exploitation is more likely to occur and be further beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies;
• The significant scale of the informal, grey and criminal economies, where exploitation and slavery are increasingly commonplace; as well as the general weakness of the rule of law and effective law enforcement;
• Rudimentary immigration regimes that fail to keep pace with the scale of illegal and unregulated migration; the lack of legitimate migration programmes versus extensive illegal organised migration networks (it is estimated that only one tenth of overall migration flows in the CIS is state-regulated, and that less than 5 per cent of migrants have access to legitimate mechanisms and sources of information regarding migration);
• The absence of conditions for normal business activities, especially for SMEs; weak and ‘overtaxed’ businesses must exploit cheap labour in order to survive;
• The absence of corporate social responsibility mechanisms;
• Extensive corruption which lets criminal activities flourish, such as registering firms under false identity, issuing fake migrant worker registration, protection rackets in retail trade, construction, prostitution, as well as other activities associated with human exploitation);
• The lack of trust in the authorities shared by both migrants and local populations, inadequate legal awareness;
• The weakness of civil society, local government and other institutions that could combat exploitation at the local level; and
• The prevalence of double standards and social tolerance towards human exploitation.

While poverty creates the large groups of workers who are ‘willing to be exploited’ that form the supply side of the market for forced labour and trafficking, these socio-economic processes generate the demand side of this market, and are embedded in the socio-economic system.

Increasingly, human exploitation and slavery are no longer confined to marginal practices in specific places, due to the sheer number of people involved and because they are becoming a structural feature of the regional economy. A socio-economic infrastructure serving ‘the field of human exploitation’, which is subject neither to national laws nor to democratic or human rights principles, is forming in the CIS. These infrastructures tend to be built around specific areas such as street markets, train terminals in the large cities, construction sites where migrants are employed, and prey on certain social groups such as work migrants, the disabled, orphaned children, and the like. Many aspects of this unlawful infrastructure (such as the illegal system of international money transfers Khavala, international pornography rings, the sex trade, or cross-border money-laundering) are well integrated into the global criminal system.

Putting anti-trafficking on the CIS policy agenda

The above analysis suggests a number of policy implications that could be the basis for further anti-trafficking work in the region.

(1) The absence of reliable and comprehensive data is one of the serious obstacles to combating human trafficking in the region. The construction of an integrated, internally consistent database, one that could support deeper inquiry into multiple aspects of trafficking in CIS countries, is a first priority. This research could focus on:

(a) developing a detailed sub-national mapping of poverty, social exclusion, and other forms of vulnerability that can identify the geographic locations of large groups of individuals who are potentially vulnerable to traffickers and trafficking;

(b) the collection of information on the socio-economic, spatial, demographic, ethnic, and gender dimensions of migrants and trafficked individuals;

(c) detailed analysis of the extent to which ‘over-developed’ labour, social policy, and other laws and regulations push otherwise normal commercial activities into the informal sector, where exploitation is more likely and further removed from the reach of law enforcement agencies;
(d) detailed analysis of the extent to which national and regional human trafficking and other forms of exploitation are integrated with global networks; and

(e) capacity building for those law enforcement agencies most directly engaged in combating human trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Improving their abilities to work directly with representatives of vulnerable communities, whose members are most likely to become victims of trafficking and other forms of exploitation, should be a key goal.

(2) Another important neglected aspect of the anti-trafficking policy debate is the fragmentation and lack of continuity in policy and programming. This manifests itself in short-term projects that are financed from a variety of sources and are implemented by different organisations with a focus on achieving quick results. These characteristics reduce the impact of this work and prevent its integration into other strategic and long-term socio-economic programmes and initiatives. Combating human trafficking requires a systematic approach based on the principles of continuity of design and implementation for long-term effect.

Such an approach requires the creation of a permanent (or long-term) coordinating instrument for combating problems of human trafficking and the slave trade in the CIS region. This instrument could take the form, for example, of an International Coordinating Committee of the CIS for combating the spread of human trafficking, slavery, and exploitation, consisting of national representatives of the Ministries of Labour and of the Interior.

1. According to ILO from 10 to 20 percent of illegal migrants are facing various forms of forced labour and human trade (through restricting freedom of movement and communication, seizure of documents, debt bondage, physical violence, intimidation, fraud, etc).

2. The share of informally employed in the total employment is high (above 10%) in all CIS countries, whether experiencing outward or inward migration. In Russia employment in the informal sector is as high as 10 million people or 15 per cent of the total employment among Russian residents (not including illegal migrants). The estimates of the share of informal employment in the late 1990s in Ukraine were as high as 50 percent and in Kazakhstan roughly 30 per cent.

Marina Baskakova, Sc.D. Economics, is a principal research fellow at the Institute for Socio-economic problems of the population at Russian Science Academy (RAS); Elena Tiurukanova, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Institute for Socio-economic problems of the population at Russian Science Academy (RAS); Dono Abdurazakova, Ph.D., is a regional gender advisor, UNDP Regional Centre, Bratislava, and History. For more information, contact: Dono Abdurazakova (dono.abdurazakova@undp.org).