Despite these widespread problems, some regions have been more active than others. Authorities in Far Eastern Khabarovsk have acknowledged the scale and severity of the problem since 2000, initiating antitrafficking measures such as closing down businesses that recruit women, and initiating a multi-agency work­ing group to facilitate cooperation since 2000 (Erokhina 2005, 90—92). Other ac­tive […]

The government has taken few steps toward a campaign to prevent trafficking. Se­nior governmental officials participate in meetings on trafficking and talk about trafficking, raising media attention to the trafficking, but there has been no fed­eral program on the prevention of trafficking (Duban 2006, 51). Raising popular awareness of the problem is mostly left to […]

Even more problematic is the lack of protection or assistance for women who have been trafficked.55 Despite the new victim/witness protection law in 2004, the funds had not been appropriated for its implementation until very recently (Duban 2006, 50). According to the U. S. State Department, only “[f]our victims of trafficking benefited from the program […]

Despite the antitrafficking legislation and the Russian government’s increased at­tention to the problem, there has been relatively little accomplished in practice (e. g. Duban 2006; Tiuriukanova 2006; U. S Department of State 2007). From the 2004 to 2007 TIP reports, for example, Russia remained on the Tier 2 watch list, meaning that, according to the […]

There have been several foreign interventions to foster increased responsiveness of state actors to the problem. The most active were from the United States. Ameri­can University’s TraCCC created training materials for a multidisciplinary au­dience, used at a 2001 seminar in Budapest attended by some investigators and prosecutors from Russia (Stoecker and Shelley 2005). The Saratov […]

There has been almost no monitoring of Russian state practice from human rights organizations. There have been no significant reports or campaigns from the big human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty Interna­tional. The Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights have included trafficking in women as part of their campaign since 2003, but […]

That Russians tend to think more broadly about trafficking than Americans il­lustrates that Russians have appropriated and translated the concept of traffick­ing in persons into the Russian vernacular, but in contrast to domestic violence, the translated concept is so resonant to various national concerns that the trans­formative feminism is missing. Partially, their conceptualization reflects a […]

Unlike the case for the other forms of violence against women, there are abso­lutely no systematic public opinion surveys of the public’s awareness of traffick­ing in women. Even with surveys repeated over time, it would be tough to sort out whether awareness was due to increased attention or to the increase in the actual problem […]

Analysis of coverage of trafficking over time in the national newspaper Izvestiia suggests that attention to the issue mounted as a result of the parliamentary at­tention to the issue (table 6.2; see appendix 2 for method)^1 There was a small table 6.2. The Incidence of Various Terms to Refer to Trafficking in Izvestiia, 1995—2005 IS […]

The success of passing antitrafficking legislation, the only major national legisla­tive reform on gender violence since Soviet collapse, was marred by the fact that so much of what global feminists regarded as good practices was not included in the final legislation. There were no national commitments to prevention or so­cial services for deported victims, not […]