Human Trafficking In Russia

Human trafficking is equivalent to modern-day slavery which is the acquisition of people using force, deception or coercion with the intent to exploit . Human trafficking also takes places in various forms and is planting itself in almost every part of every industry supply chain. Riding on the crest of the clandestine nature of the crime and lack of political will, most traffickers get away scorn-free and this would only result in continual exploitation of the society. Despite various efforts made by advocacy groups and governments, government inefficiency and corruption and the debilitating circumstances chain the victims to this vicious trap, such that the effectiveness of current effort is greatly undermined. Therefore, the purpose of

There were forced migration within and between former Soviet states which led to increase prevalence of human trafficking. The break-up of the Soviet Union stranded many ethnic Russians outside the borders of the Russian Federation which placed them in situations where they faced dire economic circumstances in the successor states, language issues, and discrimination. Instead of seeking citizenship in the new states, they migrated to the Russian Federation. The problem here is that the transportation of human traffickers victims were relatively easy as there were existing transportation infrastructure. Also, as there were no visa required to travel across the former states of the Soviet Union, the people could easily made repeated trips between the states as they save the trouble from administrative work and time. To add on, as there were diasporas communities dispersed all over Russia, due to cultural familiarity, there were a large migration movement from the former Soviet Union states into Russia. Hence, the relax immigration policies and no clear documentation of the migrants is what exacerbated the problem of human trafficking in Russia and cause the rising cases of illicit

Till date, the government have been focusing on establishing and adopting legislation that criminalise human trafficking as well as ratifying laws concerning human trafficking related offences. In March 2004, Russia has signed and ratified the Palermo Protocol. This ratification highlight Russia's readiness in combating human trafficking. However, much less has been done in fully addressing the protection issues and there is an urgent need to further clarify its legal definitions of human trafficking under its code of law.

For instance, Article 127.1 of the criminal code of Russia sets out the legal definition of human trafficking by way of an extensive list of specific forms of exploitation. This has the effect of excluding forms of exploitation not explicitly listed in the statute. Hence, this definition sprouts ambiguity which creates loopholes for the traffickers to play around with the law and them conceiving of more ingenious ways of human exploitation , evading criminal punishments. Furthermore, Russia has been placed in the tier 3 placing by the USA which means that Russia do not fully comply with the minimum standards of the trafficking victims protection act’s (TVPA) and are not making significant efforts to do