Rostov-on-Don: slavery victims' reintegration problems addressed

Rostov-on-Don has hosted a roundtable on the issues of rehabilitation and reintegration into society of the victims of trafficking in humans. The discussion participants were officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Federal Migratory Service, and office of the Ombudsman in the Rostov Region, and representatives of public organizations.

The organizer of the event was action the International Organization on Migration (IOM) together with the Autonomous Non-Commercial Organization (NCO) "Regional Resource Centre for Prevention of Violence".

"One of the main problems is that we don't receive any data about victims of trafficking from law enforcement bodies. In the near future, we hope to design some mechanism for re-directing victims of trafficking to us for rendering assistance in rehabilitation and return to normal life," one of NCO leaders said.

According to Sergey Tveretnikov, head of the 3rd Department of ORB-2 of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Rostov Region is in the crossroad of migrants' flows, "including illegal ones; and these flows will only increase in the near future."

"Illegal migrants go to the south of Russia to earn money," he said. "Many of them get into slavery, they are forced to work free of charge, and women are forced to exercise prostitution."

According to experts, from 800,000 to 2 million persons get into slavery every year, including trafficking in humans with the aim of sexual exploitation, forcing people into profession of beggary, use of slaves' labour and trafficking in humans for use in armed formations and so on. There are no exact data on how many Russian citizens are among them.