Human Trafficking in [Ukraine Street Children in [Ukraine] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Ukraine] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Ukraine [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] Ukraine is a source, transit, and destination country for men,
women and children trafficked internationally for the purposes of commercial
sexual exploitation and forced labor. Ukrainian women are trafficked to
Russia, Poland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, the Czech
Republic, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Serbia,
Montenegro, Spain, Hungary, and Israel for commercial sexual exploitation.
Women from Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are
trafficked through Ukraine to Europe for commercial sexual exploitation.
Although reliable data is not available, Ukraine may also be a destination
for people from former Soviet republics for forced labor and prostitution. In
addition, internal trafficking occurs in Ukraine; men and women are
trafficked within the country for the purposes of labor exploitation in the
agriculture, service, and forced begging sectors, as well as for commercial
sexual exploitation. Ukrainian children are trafficked both internally and
transnationally for commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, and
involuntary servitude in the agriculture industry. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2007
[full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Ukraine leads in number of human trafficking victims in Eastern Europe, group says More Ukrainian men, women and children have been trafficked abroad and forced into indentured labor or prostitution than in any other Eastern European country since the Soviet collapse, an international migration group said in a report Monday. The organization said the full scale of trafficking through, from and within Eastern Europe is difficult to determine since most victims are unwilling, scared or unable to contact authorities. Sex Traffickers Prey On Eastern Europeans Maria is a 30-year-old mother from Ukraine who left behind her husband and two young children to take what she was told would be a job in Italy as a cleaner. The recruiters who originally promised her a high-paying salary were men who posed as representatives of a legitimate employment agency. Maria says they gained her trust because they looked professional and persuasive. ICE arrests men who forced women to work as strippers According
to the criminal complaint, Michail Aronov, 32, who is a citizen of Lithuania,
and Aleksander Maksimenko, 25, a U.S. citizen, are suspected of recruiting
women from the Ukraine to travel to the United States under the guise of
working as waitresses here. Once the women arrived in the U.S., they were
forced to work at “Cheetah’s” strip club. The women were driven to
their work from their apartment and back again. There was no telephone in
their apartment. The complaint also states the women were intimidated, hit
and threatened with death if they tried to leave. ***
ARCHIVES *** Mobile phones
in the fight against human trafficking - Dial 527 TRAFFICKING
HOTLINE - In the Ukraine, now even the
simplest of handsets could potentially save lives thanks to three of the
country's leading service providers who have collaborated with
the International Organization for Migration to set up a toll-free
information hotline. Customers of Ukrainian mobile phone service providers
KyivStar, UMC and life:) can dial '527'
from their handsets in order to receive information and advice from the IOM
on migration and trafficking issues, and potential migrants will also get
information on legal methods of migration. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – There were also reports that both
women and men were forced to work in agriculture, especially in the southern
regions, in summer and autumn. Children were exploited in industrial cities
in the east. For example, 2 adults in the eastern town of Men were mainly trafficked as
construction workers and miners. Children who were trafficked across the
border or within the country were forced to provide sexual services, engage
in unpaid work, or beg. The overwhelming majority of trafficking victims were
women, who were used as sex‑workers, housekeepers, seamstresses, and
dishwashers. Trafficked women were also used to bear children for infertile
couples. There was a lack of information regarding male victims of
trafficking, because men generally did not recognize themselves as victims of
trafficking. As a result, men rarely addressed complaints to law enforcement
agencies. Estimates regarding the number of
trafficked citizens varied, but the IOM stated that one 1 of every 10 persons
knew someone in their community who has been trafficked. According to Human
Rights Ombudsman Karpachova, approximately five to seven million citizens
lived and worked abroad, many without legal protection, and were therefore potentially
vulnerable to traffickers. Traffickers used a variety of
methods to recruit victims, including advertisements in newspapers and on
television and radio that offered jobs abroad with high salaries and promises
of modeling contracts, marriage proposals, and trips through travel agencies.
Traffickers often presented themselves as friends of other friends and
deceived the relatives of potential victims. Most of the traffickers were
members of organized crime groups. The traffickers often paid for the
processing of passports and travel documents for the victims, thus placing
them into debt bondage. In some cases the traffickers simply kidnapped their
victims. Concluding
Observations Of The Committee On The Rights Of The Child (CRC) - 1995 [11] The Committee is worried by
the high rate of abandonment of children, especially new-born babies, and the
lack of a comprehensive strategy to assist vulnerable families. This
situation can lead to illegal inter-country adoption or other forms of
trafficking and sale of children. In this context the Committee is also
concerned about the absence of any law prohibiting the sale and trafficking
of children, and the fact that the right of the child to have his/her
identity preserved is not guaranteed by the law. Ukraine
woman forced to dance at strip club testifies in D.C. Lured from the Ukraine with the
promise of a student visa, the young woman believed she was headed to the
U.S. to study and to Virginia Beach to work as a waitress -- not to Detroit,
where she was forced to dance at a strip club. Using the alias "Katya" to
protect herself, the 22-year-old woman spoke publicly for the first time
today, describing to a congressional panel how she was forced to work at the
Detroit club for months until she and another young woman escaped with the
help of one of the patrons of the club.
"They forced me to work six days a week for 12 hours a day,"
she said of the men who made her work at Cheetah's in Detroit. "I could
not refuse to go to work or I would be beaten." While she was forced to
dance at the strip club, she said she was not made to be a prostitute. Harbor
Springs man helps fight abuse and human trafficking in Ukraine In terms of human trafficking,
Wiser said the committee supports groups directly involved with victims. They
are also working to prevent traffickers from receiving information about
orphans. “Traffickers are getting this
information on when these kids get released and then they target them. We
want to seal this information so it’s not available,” Wiser said. Eight
Israelis charged with trafficking human organs Israeli police have broken up an
organ transplanting ring that persuaded dozens of Israelis to have their
kidneys removed in Ukraine. But, because Israeli law does not explicitly
forbid the trafficking of organs, police may have to release the suspects. It’s not difficult to become an
organ donor. Ads have appeared in both the Russian and Arabic press. Dozens
of people are believed to have been duped into donating their body
organs. We are co-operating with the
Ukrainian justice system. In Ukraine and Israel, there is no law that a
person cannot sell body organs. But what police are charging is that they
were trafficking organs, which is illegal,” said Lizzy Troend, defence
lawyer. Israel allows transplants from
relatives or anonymous donors, but the law forbids anyone to buy organs. - IsUkr Ukraine
leads in number of human trafficking victims in Eastern Europe, group says More Ukrainian men, women and
children have been trafficked abroad and forced into indentured labor or
prostitution than in any other Eastern European country since the Soviet
collapse, an international migration group said in a report Monday. The organization said the full
scale of trafficking through, from and within Eastern Europe is difficult to
determine since most victims are unwilling, scared or unable to contact
authorities. Queen
Sylvia of Sweden awards Ukrainians for anti-trafficking efforts A recently created department
within the Interior ministry has liquidated 60 criminal groups that were
involved in human trafficking. More than 700 victims of the modern-day slave
trade have been returned to the country. Ukraine
Appeals For Action To Stop Human Trafficking "The sale of young girls and
women, sex and economic slavery are part of an international criminal
business that has taken root in Ukraine," Yuriy Pavlenko, head of a
state council to combat human trafficking, told the 31st session of the
council's General Assembly. "It
spreads fast...It demands joint efforts and active co-operation from all
governments and societies," he said. NATASHAS
- The New Global Sex Trade Every day, scores of young women
throughout the former East Bloc are lured by job offers that lead to a
hellish journey of sexual slavery and violence. Despite the barrage of
warnings on radio and TV, in newspapers and on billboards, desperate women
continue to line up with their naiveté and applications in hand, hoping that,
this time, they might just be in luck. Ukrainian
law enforcement liquidated the human trafficking channel Having financial strait, young
woman from Kherson found ad proposing well-paid job abroad (bar-women and
waitresses). “The malefactor sold Kherson resident to Turkish citizen for
$2,400. The victim had to work it off by prostitution”. Revealed:
kept in a dungeon ready to be sold as slaves The women, aged 18 to 24, are from across eastern Europe, lured from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Bulgaria, with promises of good jobs as waitresses, au pairs and dancers. Instead, they have been forced into modern-day slavery in western Macedonia, locked in the dirty cellar and only summoned upstairs by their masters to perform sexual services for customers who are usually drunk and often violent. When they were found, the victims, some of whom had been "broken in" as prostitutes in other countries on the way to Macedonia, barely knew where they were. They had no idea what the future held but knew that it was beyond their control. Sex
Traffickers Prey On Eastern Europeans Maria is a 30-year-old mother from
Ukrainian women freed from sexual slavery in Turkey thanks to phone tip-off The women - one of whom was held
for six years - were set to return to Ukraine after being rescued by Turkish
police following a call to the "157" hotline, which is run by the
IOM, the Geneva-based organization said.
Impoverished women from Eastern Europe are lured to Ukrainians
Vulnerable to the Sex Trade Yulia said she left her hometown
of Donestk four years ago for a job in one of With her family life destroyed,
Anna became desperate. She struggled on until someone she had met offered her
a job working at a hotel in another country. Anna accepted the position in
hopes of finding a better life. Her
dreams were dashed, however. After being taken abroad, and after a trip
across a desert on a pickup truck, she was locked inside an apartment. There
was no hotel job waiting for her, nor was there a hotel. Instead, she was
raped up to nine times a day by different men who paid her captors for the
sex. Anna had unwittingly become trapped in sex slavery. Russian
Girls Eager to Work Abroad, Despite the Danger of Sex Trafficking The Ukrainian Interior Ministry and the Israeli police
conducted a special operation, as a result of which an Israeli national
recruiting girls from the CIS was detained in ICE
arrests men who forced women to work as strippers According to the criminal
complaint, Michail Aronov, 32, who is a citizen of Trafficking
in Women from Ukraine [PDF] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY -
Eighty percent of the traffickers are Ukrainian citizens, and about 60
percent are women. The traffickers use
women who were formerly in prostitution as recruiters. The pimps in the
destination countries places orders with the traffickers for the number of
women they need. Once the women arrive at the destination, the criminal group
controls them. Women must repay inflated debts before they are released and
their identity and/or travel documents returned. If the women do not comply
they are threatened, beaten, and raped. A former trafficker/pimp presented
the researchers with photographs of a victim being humiliated. These
photographs were used to control her. Victims and family members of
victims are afraid to talk to the police. Often victims do not tell their
friends and families what has happened to them while they were abroad. Only
12 percent reported their victimization. The risk of retaliation from the
traffickers and organized crime groups is too high. The “Natasha”
Trade: The Transnational Shadow Market of Trafficking in Women [PDF] Irina, aged 18, responded to an
advertisement in a Kyiv, Ukraine newspaper for a training course in Berlin in
1996. With a fake passport, she traveled to Berlin, Germany where she was
told that the school had closed. She was sent on to Brussels, Belgium for a job.
When she arrived she was told she needed to repay a debt of US$10,000 and
would have to earn the money in prostitution. Her passport was confiscated,
and she was threatened, beaten and raped. When she didn’t earn enough money
she was sold to a Belgium pimp who operated in Rue d’Aarschot in the
Brussel’s red light district. When she managed to escape through the
assistance of police, she was arrested because she had no legal
documentation. A medical exam verified the abuse she had suffered, such as
cigarette burns all over her body. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 3 Civil Liberties: 2 Status: Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide Stop
Violence Against Women – Country Page Ukranian
National Consultation on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children BORDER REGULATIONS FACILITATE TRAFFICKING OF
CHILDREN - Ukraine is also a major supplier and transit country of children
trafficked for sexual purposes. According to International Organization for
Migration reports, 10% of all trafficking victims who are known to return to
Ukraine are aged 12 to 18. Trafficking of Ukrainian children is a relatively
easy operation because of inappropriate agreements reached between Ukraine
and border countries Russia, Moldova and Belarus. According to the current
Visa-Free Travel Regime applicable to children under 16, only a child’s birth
certificate needs to be presented before a child is allowed to cross these
borders legally. However, these certificates do not carry photos, and it is
easy for traffickers to take children across borders using another child’s
certificate. This also hampers preventive action to stop trafficking of
children from Ukraine through these countries to the neighbouring
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). A
modern slave's brutal odyssey EX-TRAFFICKER'S STORY - One former trafficker, now
working with the authorities and living at a secret address, told Slavery
Today how his former gang would operate.
"Most of the time we would use professional recruiters, but at
times we would kidnap women and children ourselves," he said. "The children were taken to be sold in
Italy, and the better-looking women were kept as prisoners and made to work
as prostitutes. "The men were
transported wherever they wanted to go."
He also said that the youngest child who had been abducted was around
18 months old. "I have heard that sick
children are sold and made into beggars.
"The healthy ones are kept and trained to work for the Mafia, to
deal drugs, to murder - whatever they are capable of. "I've also heard that some children
were sold for organs. This also happened with men and women, depending on the
demand." Last year, life for 15 year-old
Ioana had become unbearable. Though she was one of the best pupils in her
class, she had abandoned school and decided to leave her home and her
alcoholic parents, moving in with her grandparents. One day, while at the
market here in the Moldavian capital, she met a woman from a neighbouring
village who listened attentively to her woes and proposed that she accompany
her to Ukraine where she could find a job.
Customs was no problem. Despite her young age, Ioana was able to cross
the border in the company of a stranger, identified only by a birth
certificate of a trafficker's (neighbor lady's) daughter. From September to April 2003,
Ioana was forced to sell goods on a
market in Ukraine. As compensation, she received a pair of winter clothes
and food. Eventually, Ukrainian police who had been searching for her at the
request of her mother, found the girl and returned her to her home.
Paradoxically, Ioana reportedly told the police she preferred life with the
trafficker to her own home, believing life was better on the run than among
her alcoholic parents. Czech Police
detained criminal group responsible for trafficking Ukrainian women The criminals had promised their
victims respectable jobs with high salaries. It was only at the Czech
border that the girls realized they would have to “work off” the value of their
tickets, visas, and work permits at the night club. In Rostov
region, Russia, a trafficker was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment Having trusted the promises of
Zaur Mamedov, a minor girl went to the UAE, to the town Abu-Dabi. When
arrived to the country, she noticed at once that there wasn’t any decent job
for her promised in Ukraine, instead of it she would work in one of the
Emirates’ brothel. A woman of
20, Lviv resident, forced minors to prostitution According to the Public Relations
Centre’s information, the pimp offered girls a job of waitresses at the
camping site. For her own money she bought them clothes and lodged in rooms.
Then she was saying that there was no vacant place for a waitress, and it is
necessary to pay off the money already spent and offered them to work them
off by prositution. II. Vital
Voices Anti- Trafficking Activities FOR SALE
OR RENT— THE CAPTIVE DAUGHTERS OF UKRAINE - Ms. Verveer talked about her
encounters with Ukrainian women pleading for help with their missing
daughters during her trip she made in 1997 as the Chief of Staff to First
Lady Hillary Clinton. “They were crying and asking for our help because their
daughters and neighbors were missing and they didn’t know what to do. It was
not until then did we realize how serious the trafficking problem was.” After
that trip, the Clinton Administration began working with NGOs, legal experts,
and government agencies to pass legislation that eventually became the U.S.
Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000. [page 35]
The experts consulted in the course of the research believe that girls
are sold for between US$2,000 and US$10,000 each. The destination countries
are Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Canada, Italy, the United States, Germany, the
Arab Emirates and Japan. Experts
Criticize EU Over Human Trafficking KIDNAPPED AND HELPLESS - The victims are often utterly
dependent on their employers as they are unable to legally apply for
residence permits, Wijers said. Entire industries rely on the illegal workers
who are kept as slaves, she said. The authorities should develop witness
protection programs for victims willing to testify against traffickers and
national referral mechanisms to identify victims. He cited intelligence and police
information as identifying a growing demand for underage girls. Women from
Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine,
Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria continue to make up the largest number of
victims, Lilya
4-Ever - Critically acclaimed feature-length film
about trafficking While exact numbers are difficult
to pinpoint, roughly 75% of the apprehended cases of trafficking victims in
the New York area in the past year have been from Eastern Europe - about 50%
comprise young women and children from Ukraine. Ukraine's Top
Dissident Raises a Rare Female Voice LOOKING FOR A BETTER LIFE ABROAD - Because of the lack of equal
opportunities in Ukraine, many gifted and educated women feel compelled to
look for better life abroad, says parliamentarian Bilozir. She adds that
about 70 percent of Ukrainian labor migrants are women. "I had graduated from one of
the top universities in the country, and still there were no prospects for a
good job or a good life," says Natalia Cherkaska, an
information-technology specialist who grew up in Lviv, a major city in
Western Ukraine and now lives in San Francisco. "The pay there is
meager. And on tope of that, most men drink, demanding that a woman takes
care of them and the kids." Women's limited work opportunities
"may leave them vulnerable to being trafficked into the commercial sex
industry or other forms of forced labor," according to the Human Rights
Watch report. The World Bank said in
its 2000 report that the trafficking of women from Ukraine into forced labor
"has reached an unprecedented level even when compared to other Former
Soviet Union countries." Tatiana's
Story - Prostitution - Ukraine to Holland Like most victims of trafficking,
Tatiana's reason for travelling abroad was to support her family. Through an
agent in Belarus, she arranged to move to Holland to work as a waitress. A number
of the agent's contacts assisted her in her journey from Belarus, through
Germany to Holland, and everything went sméoothly, until she arrived. Once in Holland, Tatiana was
taken to a night club where she was forced to work as a prostitute. For the
next four months she was a prisoner, living and working in the club. All her
earnings were taken by the club owner, for rent, food and other living costs,
and he also demanded payment for her initial travel expenses from Belarus.
Her dream of earning money as a waitress had turned into a nightmare. She was
unable to send money home, and could not find a way to escape her desperate
situation. On top of all this, she was subjected to regular beatings. Trafficking
in Women from Ukraine Research Project U.S. - Ukraine Research
Partnership Trafficking
in Women: Moldova and Ukraine [PDF] [page 25] III. TRAFFICKING IN MOLDOVA AND UKRAINE A.
INTRODUCTION - In
1999, La Strada, an NGO working on trafficking of women in Ukraine, reported
that 420,000 Ukrainian women had been taken out of country. A police officer in Ukraine reported that in
the summer, about 20 women a week leave Luhansk. One senior member of the police force in
Donetsk, Ukraine, who is active in fighting trafficking, estimated, “500-1000
girls leave Donetsk for Turkey and other places monthly. In some towns, 95%
of the girls have gone to Greece or Turkey to work as prostitutes. Three to
five years ago, girls were tricked and cheated into going. But now they often
go voluntarily in order to make money.”
He said he knows of some women who have been deported five or six times,
“they change their passport and try to go again.” Information
Campaign Against Trafficking in Women from Ukraine [PDF] [page 14] CHAPTER 3
FROM MIGRATION INTENTIONS TO TRAFFICKING - The nation-wide survey has revealed a direct
correlation between the adverse domestic economic condition and surveyed
women’s desire to migrate. From intending to migrate to resorting to
traffickers, however, is a large step. However, there is a growing
consensus that “trafficking must be seen as part of the world-wide
feminization of poverty and of labour migration”. When women are structurally
denied access to the formal and regulated labour market, they are
increasingly being pushed into unprotected or criminalized labour markets,
such as sexual and exploitative domestic work. MARINA - I’d sat there for a long time
and didn’t know what to do. Then a nice women came to me and brought me some
food. She asked about my parents and my birthplace. The woman was Polish and
I understood her quite well. She asked me weather I knew I had to work as
prostitute. I began to cry. TANYA - She got the passport and visa and flew to Abu-Dabu.
After the arrival her passport was taken out and she was informed she had
been sold for $ 7000 and from that moment she had to work in a bar attracting
clients RAISA - It was going on about half of the year. But one
day Azim said to my daughter that she had to move to another man. She began
to protest but he showed to her money which he had received from that man and
explained that she became the slave of that man OLEXANDRA - After some time women were
resent to Germany across the river. They were resold from one place to other
by Turkish men several times. In brothels they were pushed to serve clients
together with Polish, Bulgarian and Czech women All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit,
and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Ukraine Street Children in [Ukraine] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Ukraine] [other countries]