CIS Interior Ministries unite efforts countering traffic in humans

On April 21, Dushanbe - the capital of Tajikistan, hosted the meeting of the CIS Interior Ministers Council. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko was present there as well as his Russian counterpart Rashid Nurgaliyev.

In the course of the meeting, the parties discussed the issues related to the cooperation of the CIS Interior Ministries, formation of the common electronic data base of finger-marks and shell-marks, ratification of “Instruction for the Single Procedure of International People Search” and the Cooperation Program for Combating the Human Trafficking for 2007-2010.

The Program of Cooperation was approved of participants and will be implemented by the CIS countries.

“The existing organized criminal groups thoroughly watch over the economical and social situation all over the world and analyze the legislative systems,” stressed the Russian Minister Nurgaliyev. He noted that the Program is to regulate such activities as the analysis of the criminal situation related to the human trafficking, the assurance of migration control and efforts countering the sexual exploitation of children.

As the United Nations reports, virtually every country in the world is affected by the crime of human trafficking in millions of people for sexual exploitation or forced labor, and governments must take serious steps to eliminate a scourge whose main victims are women and children.

“The fact that this form of slavery still exists in the 21st century shames us all,” UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said.

“Governments need to get serious about identifying the full extent of the problem so they can get serious about eliminating it,” he added, noting that organized criminal gangs behind the trafficking are often multi-national in their membership and operations.

The UNODC report identifies 127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries and 137 destination countries. It shows that global efforts to combat trafficking are being hampered by a lack of accurate data, reflecting the unwillingness of some countries to acknowledge that the problem affects them.

“It is extremely difficult to establish how many victims there are world-wide as the level of reporting varies considerably, but the number certainly runs into millions,” Mr. Costa said. “It is difficult to name a country that is not affected in some way.”