OSCE centre concludes specialist training against human trafficking

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Friday concluded the first of a series of specialist training schemes for Uzbek law enforcement agencies investigating human trafficking. "The training scheme is a part of the OSCE Centre's Anti-Trafficking Programme, which has been developed in line with the OSCE Action Plan to combat trafficking in human beings," Per Normark, acting head of the OSCE Centre in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, told IRIN. "Though the human trafficking problem has not grown in such a big way as it has in Ukraine or Belarus, it is a growing problem here that should be addressed immediately," he said. The five-day training course, which started on Monday, brought together 25 experts from different law enforcement bodies of Uzbekistan, both from Tashkent and other regions. Topics of the training programme included a legislative overview, the current trafficking situation, victim identification, investigative principles and risk assessment, special needs of child victims, criminal justice conditions, phases of investigation, disruptive tactics and intelligence-gathering activity. According to Normark, several specialist training courses for representatives of Uzbek law enforcement bodies would be held through the autumn of 2005. "This seminar is one of the ways that Uzbek law enforcement bodies are collaborating with the international community to tackle human trafficking," Nadezhda Maslova, a prosecutor and attendee of the training, told IRIN. "Lectures and recommendations given by our trainer, an international expert and former Scotland Yard investigator, are really interesting and very useful for us. I think this seminar was very fruitful for us." Since 2003, the OSCE Centre in Tashkent has conducted a number of introductory training courses for law enforcement agencies and other interested state bodies, representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and journalists in its awareness-raising efforts. Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous state, has become a growing source country for human trafficking and the sex industry, due to its declining economy and rising poverty, experts say. An annual report on human trafficking issued by the US State Department said in 2003 that between 40 and 80 percent of the country's 26 million inhabitants had slipped into poverty since the country gained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. And while the US human trafficking report in 2003 identified Uzbekistan as one of the worst nations in the world in preventing forced prostitution and slave labour - designating it as "Tier 3" - a year later the same report reclassified it as "Tier 2", an acknowledgement of the Uzbek authorities' efforts to mitigate the problem. According to Maslova, Uzbekistan faced human trafficking related problems quite recently and law enforcement bodies were taking all the necessary preventive measures. "Fortunately, the problem has not grown as much as it has in some other countries of origin for trafficking and we have all the chances to make the process decline," Maslova told IRIN, adding that the main concentration was on awareness raising among the population. "We are more worried with the recent appearance of minors among trafficking victims," she said. However, an official from the recently formed anti-trafficking department of the country's Internal Affairs Ministry told IRIN under condition of anonymity that trafficking related criminal cases had risen significantly in 2004 compared to the previous year. In Uzbekistan, human trafficking related figures have never been released. At the beginning of the year the general public prosecutor's office released the information that over the past three years more than 2,500 criminal cases of human trafficking had been recorded. Nadira Karimova, coordinator of the International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) counter-trafficking project in Uzbekistan, told IRIN that 293 trafficked victims had requested the project's help since November 2002 and so far 178 of them had returned home with the assistance of IOM and partner organisations. "But many cases remain undiscovered as trafficking victims don't want to contact our hotlines, set up in seven major cities of Uzbekistan, for fear of being condemned by their relatives and isolated by the society. Many of them are threatened by retaliation if they contact police," she added.