Human trafficking: Irina's story Irina was a 16-year-old high school student from the southern Russian Federation when she accepted a family friend's proposal to take a quick trip to the Middle East. Authorities routinely detained and deported possible foreign victims with no effort to screen them as victims or refer them to care providers. Russia did not have a national action plan, nor was there a designated lead agency to coordinate anti-trafficking measures; legislation that would implement such a framework continued to languish at the highest levels within the presidential administration. The prosecutor said he was only able to prove human trafficking in one of the cases and said the other eight women had come from Russia to Sweden of their own will. Corruption and official complicity remained significant concerns, inhibiting law enforcement action during the year. The government maintained negligible efforts to protect victims. • Create a central repository for publicly available information on investigation, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing data for trafficking cases. How does the wider Russian public view human trafficking into prostitution? Russian women and children are reportedly victims of sex trafficking in Russia and abroad, including in Northeast Asia, Europe, Central Asia, Africa, the United States, and the Middle East. Based on data gathered from 155 countries, it offers the first global assessment of the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. Authorities conducted scheduled and unannounced audits of firms employing foreign laborers to check for violations of immigration and labor laws – with penalties in the form of revoking foreign worker permits. • Increase efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses and convict traffickers, including complicit officials, respecting due process. There were no reports of victims assisted in these shelters in 2018. Employers sometimes bribe Russian officials to avoid enforcement of penalties for engaging illegal workers. Despite credible reports of forced labor and slave-like conditions of North Koreans working in Russia, the Russian government did not report any investigations into those conditions. It did not report comprehensive data on trafficking criminal cases, making it difficult to assess the adequacy or effectiveness of law enforcement efforts. Traffickers subject workers from Russia and other countries in Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia—including Vietnam and DPRK—to forced labor in Russia. This is not a UNHCR publication. There are reports of Russian citizens facing forced labor abroad. While human trafficking and slavery have always been an issue in most areas of the globe, human trafficking in Russia became exacerbated with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. There are between five and 12 million foreign workers in Russia, of which the government estimates 2 million are irregular migrants. Media reports indicated Russia had begun to repatriate the first wave of laborers whose permits had expired. Root Causes, At-Risk Groups, and High Risk Regions 26 1.2.1. This article first appeared on the Atlantic Council site.. Ukraine remains one of Europe's most notorious sources of human trafficking. As in previous years, the government did not draft a national strategy or assign roles and responsibilities to government agencies. An NGO assisted approximately 125 victims in 2017. The government maintained bilateral contracts with the DPRK government, which continued to operate work camps in Russia throughout 2018. Authorities reportedly covered repatriation costs on a case-by-case basis. There were limited examples of government cooperation with civil society. 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