Fwd: "Juliette M. Engel, MD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> International Sexual Trafficking of Russian Girls as a Factor in Declining Population By Juliette M. Engel, MD MiraMed Institute, Founding Director Moscow, Russia [EMAIL PROTECTED] David: I have been watching the flurry of articles on the accellerating decline in the Russian population with great interest and would like to add the results of my own research on the growing international organized criminal business of sexual trafficking of young women and girls from the former CIS and suggest that the precipitous loss of child-bearing aged women from the population pool is an obvious and overlooked factor which must be addressed both inside of Russia and internationally. I have included a summary portion of a report I prepared in November of 1998 for the United Nations Development Fund for Women as background material to JRL readers. UNWITTING RECRUITMENT OF RUSSIAN WOMEN AND GIRLS INTO INTERNATIONAL SEXUAL SLAVERY According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United States State Department, over 500,000 women and girls from the former Soviet Union, mainly from the Russian Federation, have been lured into seeking work oversees by organized criminal gangs posing as legitimate, legally registered job recruiters. As soon as these women cross the border, their passports are confiscated by the traffickers and the women are sold into slavery as prostitutes. These women are currently being trafficked to more than 40 receiving countries documented by the Global Survival Network including the U.S. and Canada. We know from our experience that trafficking from the Yaroslavl Oblast, the surrounding regions of Novgorod, Moscovsky oblast, Leningradsky Oblast, the Ural regions, Buryatia and Karelia is particularly severe. At present, Russia has no enforceable laws relating to the trade in human beings so traffickers cannot be effectively prosecuted. Free to operate without fear, traffickers simply set up legitimate businesses and then openly advertise for girls. In economically depressed rural towns and villages, the lure of good jobs at high pay with no experience is hard to resist. Social and Psychological Factors Contributing to Current Problem: 1) Idealized View of Foreign Life During the Cold War it was impossible for Russian citizens to travel or work abroad. Access to information beyond the borders was government controlled. Russians learned to distrust their government, i.e. Moscow, and extreme censorship paradoxically created an idealized vision of life abroad. The sudden opening of the country to an onslaught of media, entertainment, and foreign goods during Perestroika in the late 1980s coincided with the easing of restrictions on international travel. To villagers viewing the world beyond their borders for the first time on television, it seemed a glittering place filled with hope and opportunity. Television programs imported from the United States such as Dallas, Dynasty, Santa Barbara and Crime Story, were dubbed crudely into Russian and have topped the national ratings since their introduction in the early 1990s. Casinos and nightclubs seemed to sprout up overnight in every city, town and village. While some Russians adapted quickly to their new economic and social freedom, many others who were eager to profit from the wealth they suddenly saw around them became easy targets for get rich quick schemes. Millions of Russians, including thousands of urbane Moscovites, for example, lost millions of rubles, lining up for days to invest their savings in an infamous MMM pyramid scheme even after it had been exposed as a fraud and its perpetrators were languishing in jail. 2) Economic Crisis and Loss of Social Safety Net By the early 1990s, even as the heady era of get rich quick schemes and dazzling images of an easy and prosperous life just across the border were reaching ever deeper into the rural fabric of Russian life, a new reality struck home: The collapse of Communism and privatization had led to a collapse of the internal economy and the social support system. Widespread corruption fueled this boom or bust atmosphere as average Russians struggled make ends meet. Hundreds of unregulated banks, seeing an opportunity to make millions speculating on an inherently weak currency, offered unsuspecting citizens spectacular interest rates. As a result, millions of Russians saw their savings evaporate as banks folded overnight. Unable to support its currency, the government fell further and further behind in payments to pensioners, government-supported institutions such as hospitals, schools, orphanages and government-supported industries such as coal mining and defense. However flawed, the Soviet system had for decades provided pensions, health care, education for all citizens (including orphans), day care and hundreds of other benefits which made life possible for students, pensioners and people at the lowest end of the government pay scale -- usually women. These benefits included free education, free bus and metro passes, free day care, reduced train and plane fares and reduced prices for consumer goods in special co-operative stores. Today, most of these benefits have been abolished. The high number of unemployed women, the concentration of women in low paying jobs -- though not necessarily the least skilled jobs -- and the reliance of women on a failed social support system, has profoundly effected their economic status and future prospects. According to the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation, at the beginning of 1993, 63% of the total number of unemployed in Russia were women. By 1997, that figure had risen to nearly 80%. Among young people 29 years of age and younger, women constitute 70% of the unemployed. Women make up more than 80% of single-parent, single-income heads of families raising underage children and among that population group, over 80% are unemployed. Faced with this economic impoverishment and decreasing access to educational and job opportunities in Russia; bombarded on television with the glittering images of easy money and a glamorous life just across the border, young women are easy prey for sexual traffickers. 3) Risk-free Environment for Traffickers Ludmila Zavadskaya, former Deputy Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation acknowledges that although the Ministry of Justice is aware of this criminal trafficking, Russia lacks effective tools in its criminal code that would enable its justice system to prosecute traffickers. Zavadskaya states, There is no definition of trafficking in Russian criminal codes. Without a definition of trafficking as a crime, even women who survive their exploitation and return to Russia are unable to prosecute leaving traffickers operating freely in their villages. Survivors are not able to return home for fear of death or retribution to their family. They live in hiding, powerless to protect themselves or prosecute their oppressors. Olga Samarina, Deputy Director of the Department of the Matters of the Family, Women and Children of the Ministry of Labor of Russia states that another key reason that the government has resisted dealing with the problem of trafficking is that it is a not a crime which is committed in Russia. Women are recruited by legitimate registered Russian businesses who take them across borders with their documents in order. This makes trafficking very difficult to prove in Russian courts despite verifiable accounts of physical violence, rape and enslavement which occur abroad. Zavadskaya cites the lack of international treaties which would allow Russia to investigate criminal activity, such as enslavement, against its citizens in other countries. Also, the lack of interagency cooperation within the Russian government impedes the flow of information between such critical agencies as the Ministry of Justice and the Consular Service (under the Foreign Ministry) she reports. Without reciprocal agreements against trafficking with other countries, and without a legal definition of trafficking as a crime, the Russian Government has no legal obligation to monitor the whereabouts of Russian women and girls abroad, their types of employment or exploitation. These loopholes also release the Russian Consular Service from the obligation to help women who escape and flee to their embassies for help. 4) Criminalization of the Trafficking Victim Once Russian women have crossed the border, they have lost any legal recourse. If they escape from the traffickers and reach a Russian consulate in a foreign country, trafficked women are usually turned away. They are considered to be in a foreign country illegally, having violated the terms of their visas by working as prostitutes and they are without their passports which have been confiscated by the traffickers and pimps. As illegal immigrants, trafficked women have no legal standing. This victim as criminal scenario is exploited by traffickers and puts women even more in the power of their recruiters, pimps and brothel owners. 6) Mob Intimidation, Sophisticated Deception, Poverty and Isolation Renders Russian NGOs Ineffective: According to Dianne Post, Gender Specialist for the American Bar Association ABACEELI Project in Moscow, there is extreme resistance on the part of Russian parliament, Russian courts and the police to even address making changes to the Russian criminal code which would address trafficking. According to Ludmila Zavadskaya, former Deputy Minister of Justice, instead of counting on governmental advocacy, womens NGOs must lead the way in the struggle to end sexual trafficking. Relying on struggling womens NGOs to lead the battle against multi-billion dollar criminal trafficking is completely unrealistic and dangerous. NGOs are intimidated by the very real threat of mob violence -particularly in villages. Although some NGOs have begun to organize in Moscow and St. Petersburg by gathering data about trafficking and seeking funding from foreign organizations to help survivors, their efforts are highly secret and for their own protection even their telephone hotline numbers are not publicized. A) Intimidation of NGOs by Traffickers: According to the Foundation Against Trafficking in Women(STV) which was founded in the Netherlands in 1987, there has been a steady increase in the number of women trafficked from the former Soviet Bloc since 1989. Similar trends have been noted by NGOs in other West European countries. STV data show that this traffic is mainly controlled by Eastern European and Russian criminal groups operating in the recruiting as well as in the receiving destination countries. These groups are highly organized, extremely violent, and often engaged in a variety of criminal activities. Russian television news features daily broadcast programs showing the murdered and mutilated victims of mob violence in graphic detail. Even in village environments, local mafias operate violent rings of extortion, illegal liquor sales, drugs. The general public is well educated on the constant threat of mob violence. They are also generally aware that organized crime is involved in prostitution but have less specific knowledge about mob-controlled trafficking. NGOs working on violence issues and beginning to work on trafficking keep a very low profile and are constantly fearful of the threat of violence. B) Sophisticated Deception: Trafficking is a highly sophisticated criminal activity involving recruitment through legitimate registered fronts that need advertising, offices, local personnel, visas, international travel and co-conspirators in the Russian and foreign governments. Girls are recruited through a series of events, interviews, photosessions -- a complex process of deception which plays on her desire to find good work, to travel abroad and to help her family. Families usually participate in the process -- attending recruiting sessions, helping pay for photographs, reviewing contracts. With no information to make them suspect the truth, and with a relative media blackout on the subject of trafficking, girls and their families become eager and unwitting victims -- leaving NGOs in a state of confusion as to what constitutes a legitimate business and who is actually fronting for traffickers. C) Lack of NGO Funding in Rural Russia During Soviet times, a network of NGO-like government supported organizations helped maintain the social safety net -- providing health care, day care, social, charitable and cultural support. The remnants of some of these organizations still function to some degree today and form the basis of the fledgling rural NGO movement in Russia. Virtually all funding to these organizations has ceased. Those that continue to function do so on a voluntary basis or with some support from their local municipal townships. Their lack of resources renders them ineffectual for sustained advocacy work. Much of Russias population is rural or concentrated in small industrial towns. Once outside Russias few main urban centers, the country rapidly dissolves into a meshwork of disconnected, isolated small villages and medium sized towns. These economically impoverished locales have suffered the most severe deprivation following the collapse of the Soviet system and provide sexual traffickers a rich harvest of young women and girls. Also scattered throughout these regions, are thousands orphanages housing an estimated two million children which, according to the Russian Orphanage Association, are primary targets of traffickers. Government support of orphanages has steadily declined, dropping 30% in 1998 alone. With decreasing access to jobs, education and even the basic necessities of survival, orphaned girls are only too willing to respond to promises of work and a new life abroad. D) Russia's Internal Isolation -- Physical and Cultural: It cannot be overemphasized that in dealing with Russian organizations and non-urban organizations in particular, there is little history of coalition building or cooperation. Centuries of oppression have left villages suspicious of one another. Organizations rarely share resources or information and do not initiate communication with other organizations. Community outreach is not a functioning concept and many organizations are even reluctant to give out their telephone number to another Russian group. There is a deep mistrust and dislike of Moscow. The idea of anything outside the local oblast has an almost mystical albeit suspicious air. Compounding their deep-rooted mistrust of one another is their physical isolation. Telephone service throughout Russia is poor. Calls from village to village must be made at the post office. Postal service is slow and unreliable and many regions lack reliable electricity. Transportation is difficult and arduous. As a result, villagers, who comprise the greatest number of inhabitants of Russia, live in virtual isolation except for access to radio and television. _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
