Who is at risk?

Age

• Children and adolescents under 18 years of age,

• Young adults between 18 to 25 years of age,

• Young women under 30 years of age

Place of residence

• Small towns,

• Villages,

• Migrants from villages to towns and from small towns to big cities

Education

• Low level of education

• Interrupted schooling (incomplete secondary education)

• Without professional (higher or vocational secondary) education, or with incomplete professional education

Occupation

• Unemployed individuals, including recent graduates from schools, colleges and boarding schools

• Individuals without a permanent employment, who earn their living by sporadic jobs

• Women engaged in prostitution,

• Women (sometimes also men) engaged in the entertainment and modeling business,

• Students (mainly those who study away from their home-towns and live in the student dormitories), their recruitment for vacation periods, etc.

• Migrants taking short-term jobs

Behavior Characteristics

• Individuals intending to migrate, including those who are ready to consent to an illegal employment, motivated to work or marry abroad, including clients (particularly, female) of foreign employment agencies and women wishing to have a foreign spouse, so called “mail-order brides”, i.e. clients of wedding agencies

• Individuals who are mentally ready to take high risks, victims of violence, including rape, etc.

Socially vulnerable or marginal groups

• Children from at-risk families, such as low-income families, families with problems of alcoholism, troubled families, victims of domestic violence, etc.

• Young women and girls from at-risk families

• Drug addicts

• Children in orphanages and without families, etc.

• Single mothers with limited resources to support themselves and their families

• Mothers having many children

• Migrants, including migrants from CIS countries

• Homeless persons

• HIV positives

Ethnic groups

• Individuals whose ethnicity is not the “main one” in the region of their residence, particularly ethnic minorities

• Ethnic groups from the poorest countries (for example, Tadjik migrants in Russia)

• The most criminalized ethnic communities, (or those are perceived in public opinion as the most criminalized), i.e. these ethnic communities should be classified as target groups rather than as at-risk groups. For example, Romas and Chechens are often blamed for human trafficking and kidnapping-related crimes.

Human trafficking is a complicated social phenomenon. The nature of human trafficking and exploitation is very closely linked to the spreading poverty, the labor market segregation and limited possibilities of numerous groups of population to access an effective employment, education, social protection and other resources.

Unfavorable labor market situation and limited employment opportunities provide a fertile soil of the human trafficking as well.

The economy started showing some signs of recovery since the late 90-s, which facilitated the salary raise, some reduction of unemployment level and decrease of labor market tension. However, the history shows that economic growth doesn’t lead by itself to the poverty reduction, or to the eradication of human trafficking and exploitation. Thus, the improved social and economic situation in many CIS countries didn’t result in an adequate curtail of illegal migration and it neither helped to reduce the trafficking in human beings. On the contrary, the economic growth, accompanied by the increased business competition, social inequality and disintegration, became a certain catalyst for the spread of exploitation and slavery.

Considerable disproportions of the main social and economic characteristics, indicating the living standard level in several countries, demonstrate that Russia, being an attractive migration destination from the less developed countries, still lags far behind the leading industrial countries of the world. Therefore, in the near future it will remain being the country of destination, transit and origin for the criminal exploitation of human beings.

There are several factors explaining why the poor groups of population are more than others vulnerable to human traffickers. First, the individuals suffering extreme privations and despair are inclined to at-risk social behavior. It is manifested during the job search at the labor market, as well as during other social transactions (education, medical assistance, housing, etc.). Such a behavior patterns include, for example, illegal migration, informal or marginal occupation (informal employment at heavy works in construction, agriculture, lumbar harvest and other industries, prostitution and other sex-related services, illegal manufacturing of all kind of pirated goods (clothing, shoes, CDs, alcoholic beverages, etc.)). Hoping to break out of the vicious circle of poverty, people often knowingly or unknowingly take risks and fall victims of deception and various manipulations pursuing exploitation, which makes them an easy prey for human traffickers.

Gradually the at-risk behavior becomes their normal behavior pattern and the rational behavior categories become distorted, which is manifested by, so called, “consent to exploitation” or “voluntary slavery”. Their perception of the normal social behavior pattern expands beyond the limits acceptable to the human rights opinion and the level of humankind development.

Secondly, the scarce earnings are very closely related to, so called, scarce possibilities, i.e. limited access to quality education, effective employment, medicine and other human development resources. The limited access to the social resources by itself is a considerable factor for the marginalization of considerable population groups and their vulnerability to all kinds of exploitation, inclusively as result trafficking in human beings. Thus, the absence of general education and the lack of basic legal knowledge are the facilitating factors to manipulate such people and to make them to comply with their dependence and exploitation conditions.

The spread of various forms human exploitation is also fueled by such processes as the family crisis, the increasing family violence, the growing number of troubled families, the social orphanage, the alcoholism and other factors. Approximately 14 million Russian children are raised in the single-parent families where the care is provided mainly by women. The income level of such families is considerably lower than of the families where both parents are working.

The gender disparity and the inequality of rights inside family are manifested by the widespread family violence and other family problems. The everyday hardships, housing problems, alcoholism and depreciation of family values (growing number of informal marriages, extramarital relations, etc.) are also the root causes for the increase of human trafficking and vulnerability of people to various forms of the criminal exploitation.

Human exploitation mechanisms are being adjusted to the current economic structure. While the people have limited access to the development resources, the human traffickers, using the gaps in the formal social infrastructure and services, promise them something what that they desperately need and what they can not obtain through the official ways. For example, the elderly people are promised a life substance and assistance, but in fact they are sold together with their apartments. Disabled people are often recruited for begging through promised “support and protection” that they failed to obtain from their governments. Those girls who are in search of their foreign romantic relationship are offered the “dating services” that eventually put them under the traffickers’ control. Job seekers are frequently offered assistance in their “employment” that turns out to be the slave work. There are other examples too, as the human traffickers usually promise to provide those services which are lacking in the formal social service infrastructure. The highest trafficking risks are present in those areas where the vulnerable population receives limited or insufficient assistance from the government.

The analysis of the root causes for the human trafficking is very important for the understanding of the problem itself, for the prevention and victim assistance work, as well as for detection and investigation of such crimes. The poverty reduction and the prevention activity should focus on lessening the risks of the venerable population during all kind of their social transactions at the market of labor, education, housing, etc. The assistance and rehabilitation of the human trafficking victims should take into account the fact that the return to the conditions of extreme poverty increases the re-trafficking risks.

Cited literature

Inventory and Analysis of the Current Situation and Responses to Trafficking in the Russian Federation Report conducted by E.V. Tiurukanova and the Institute of Urban Economics for the UN/IOM working Group on Trafficking of Human Beings Moscow, 2005.

Research Study «Human Development against Human Trafficking» by E. Tiurukanova, M. Baskakova and E. Mezentseva, Bratislava UNDP Regional Office, 2004 (unpublished).