Organized Crime in Russia - Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking

Russia is a supply, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children being trafficked for various purposes. The trafficking is multidimensional and it involves both commercial sexual exploitation and labor exploitation. Russia is a significant source of women trafficked to over 50 nations. Internal trafficking is a problem in the country; women are trafficked from rural areas to urban settlements for commercial sexual exploitation. Men are trafficked internally and from Central Asia for forced labor in the construction and agricultural industries. Debt bondage is common among the trafficking victims.

Russia is a transit and destination country for men and women being trafficked from Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Korea to Central Europe, Western Europe, and the Middle East for forced labor and sexual exploitation. Unemployment problem affected many women in the country which is an important factor behind the trafficking of women. In 1995 approximately 20% of women were the sole wage earners for their families. Unemployed women and desperate mothers are recruited with promises of jobs and good incomes outside of their region or country.

Many women involved in prostitution within Russia and abroad have cited the need to support their children as the main reason for being engaged in prostitution. In the Volga region, many women including teachers, nurses, single mothers and schoolgirls were reportedly involved in prostitution to survive. This resulted in increase in sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis and AIDS in the region with syphilis rates reported to be four times higher in 1998 than they were in 1995.

Worldwide, criminal organizations most frequently seize women and girls for commercial sexual exploitation from Russia along with the other former Soviet republics, large parts of Asia, Central America and South America. Trafficking of women is controlled by Russian criminal organizations often in cooperation with foreign criminal groups in Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, Italy, and Japan. In 2003 approximately two-thirds of the women trafficked to Western Europe were from Russia. Many women are sent to the United States, especially in New York, Florida, California, and Hawaii. Some Russian criminal organizations control prostitution rings in parts of Europe and the United States.