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[Second Issue of the Day]
#13
From: "Juliette M. Engel, MD" <jengel@miramed.com>
Subject: Russian anti-trafficking coalition calls on
President Putin
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002
Russian anti-trafficking coalition calls on
President Putin to respond to U.S. State Department
Trafficking in Persons Report criticizing Russia’s poor performance
MOSCOW—Russia’s largest anti-trafficking consortium of non-governmental human rights organizations today urged President Putin to immediately establish an Anti-Trafficking Task Force and adopt a new 10-point trafficking prevention/education action plan “to help save tens of thousands of Russian women from being lured overseas by criminal traffickers each year and avoid the threat of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid for Russia’s continuing failure to address its trafficking crisis.”
Citing the recently released U.S. State Department’s 2002 Trafficking in Persons Report (the “TIP Report”) which ranked 89 countries around the world according to their anti-trafficking activities, Marianna Solomotova, the development director of the Angel Coalition’s Moscow office, said “as a member of the UN, OSCE and other world bodies, Russia has known about its trafficking crisis for years. The international community and Russian NGO’s have repeatedly asked our government to take action to protect girls and young women from these criminal traffickers, but the response has always been denial. Now our country faces the serious risk of being sanctioned by the U.S. government for its continued negligence and abandonment of these women.”
“We are appealing directly to President Putin for his help,” Solomotova explained, “because of Labor Minister Pochinok’s completely unacceptable official response to the TIP Report, claiming that trafficking is an ‘isolated’ phenomenon in Russia and that all victims receive the ‘appropriate response’ of state organs and the media.”
The annual TIP Report is required by the U.S. Congress as part of its strong anti-trafficking law mandating economic sanctions against all countries who “do not fully comply with the minimum (anti-trafficking) standards and are not making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance.” Such countries are ranked “Tier 3” and are given one year to improve their record or face possible “termination of non-essential foreign aid.” The 2002 TIP report ranks Russia and 18 other countries as such “Tier 3” nations.
“In many regions of Russia, governors, Duma officials and other civic authorities, NGO’s and the public are completely supportive of our anti-trafficking programs and acknowledge the real threat trafficking poses—but the federal government has done nothing and the problem has worsened,” Solomotova said.
According the TIP report, 700,000 people are trafficked each year. The Angel Coalition and international anti-trafficking NGO’s have provided research estimating that up to 50,000 of these are trafficked from Russia. “One only has to look at any newspaper in Russia to read all of the ads promising ‘good jobs overseas at high pay’ to realize just how enormous the problem is here,” said Solomotova , “the evidence is just overwhelming, the threat is real and the damage to our country is profound.” Citing Russia’s steep population decline, Solomotova added that Russia can ill afford to lose future mothers to traffickers. “Even if these women escape, they are so brutalized and traumatized, few will ever become parents,” she continued.
The 10-point action plan proposed by the Angel Coalition asks President Putin to: · Create a Moscow Anti-Trafficking Center to coordinate the rescue and return of victims in cooperation with the international community · Establish regional anti-trafficking offices in Russia for the coordination/sharing of information and intelligence on organized crime, trafficking routes, etc. · Begin special training for Russian embassy officials in foreign countries, foreign embassies in Russia, the police force, including border officers; · Begin internal investigations of Foreign Ministry officials and other federal officers responsible for issuing, approving and/or processing visas and travel documents to Russian citizens and organizations · Enact legislation making participation/complicity in trafficking a federal crime. In addition to lengthy jail sentences, convicted traffickers and their accomplices should be required to forfeit of all trafficking profits which can then be used to support continued anti-trafficking prevention activities and a “Survivors Fund” to compensate and rehabilitate trafficking victims;
· Develop educational programs for judges and the legal profession;
· Develop protection and assistance programs allowing/encouraging trafficked victims to prosecute their traffickers;
· Encourage stronger mass media involvement to ensure trafficked women and children are perceived as victims, and traffickers as crimials Establish regional safe-house/shelter (including legal and psychological counseling) for trafficked women and children;
· Fund these activities by using income the Russian government receives from issuing travel and transit visas.
“Some of these proposals are already in progress, such as foreign embassy training here in Moscow and education activities to at-risk orphans, others are awaiting funding, but all need the full support of the federal government in order to send a strong message to traffickers that Russia is finally taking a stand. As soon as the federal government begins to take action, we will become a Tier 2 or even possibly a Tier 1 country and the end the threat of economic sanctions,” she said.
“President Putin has met with NGO’s to discuss social issues before. And he has also shown great courage in his willingness to discover and stop regional and federal corruption. We invite him or his representative to meet with us so we can work together for the women of Russia to stop the trafficking terrorists,” Solomotova concluded.
The Angel Coalition, a consortium of 43 nongovernmental organizations throughout Russia and 7 CIS countries, has been conducting anti-trafficking education and prevention activities for the past three years and in May 2001, produced Russia’s largest multi-media anti-trafficking advertising campaign with funding supplied by international foundations.
Juliette M. Engel, MD
Director of International Relations
Angel Coalition, Moscow
angel@moscomnet.com
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