«Izvestiya Kazakhstan», 17.03.2009.

L. Kopzhasarova

Stop Human Trafficking 

On March 10 in Kazakhstan under the preventive operations «STOP Human Trafficking" was launched Republican campaign "Do not become a victim of human trafficking." In the South-Kazakhstan region, it is organized in partnership with the Department of Internal Affairs of SKR and NGO "Legal Center for Women's Initiatives " Sana Sezim ".

 The problem of human trafficking - is one of the popular themes in the world of political practice, because it is a modern form of slavery, received unprecedented still spread across the planet, said the lawyer of NGO "Sana Sezim" Ellina Enikeeva. Working abroad for many labor migrant is very hard, one of which is the abuses by local authorities and employers. The reason of illegal treatment with labor migrants is often a lack of knowledge of the specifics of the country by the migrants themselves, in which they decided to find a job, as well as lack of understanding of their rights and responsibilities.

 During the campaign will be conducted Children’s Painting Competition, in which will be collected signatures under the text“ We are for protective measures for victims of human trafficking and domestic violence, living under the threat of exploitation and violence”. Questioning population will be conducted in parallel, in order to determine the level of awareness among people on the issues of human trafficking. South Kazakhstan citizens also will meet special agitation train: there will be two agitation trains on the territory of Kazakhstan – on the routs “Astana – Almaty” and “Astana – Karaganda – Taraz – Shymkent – Saryagash”.

According to the Deputy Chief of the Office for Combating Organized Crime (OCD) of SKO Kenzhebek Ondasynov, no facts of human trafficking were registered at the beginning of this and last year in South Kazakhstan. This result is considered as positive. Meanwhile, since last November of last year to the end of February  “Hotline” of NGO “Sana Sezim” received more than 1564 complaints, 59 of them – on the issues related to labor migration which is changed to human trafficking. Kenzhebek Ondasynov explained this discrepancy by legal incident: “Criminal responsibility for recruitment of people is provided by Criminal legislation of RK. There is a special article 128 of Criminal Code of RK, its qualified characteristics are deception. If deception is not proved during the investigation, as it most often happens; in this case the person will be released from responsibility”.

There is deception or there is not in any case NGO “Sana Sezim” noted disturbing tendency. According to the monitoring of this organization on the project “Provide the legal assistance to labor migrants”, the number of people exported from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan for labor and sexual exploitation is increasing. The number of relative’s complaints on the case of human trafficking has increased in the frontier regions of Tashkent  of Uzbekistan with South Kazakhstan region ( it increased  twice last year in comparison with the previous year), also there were complaints with requests to return the victims of human trafficking back from Kazakhstan.

Impunity of human traffickers related to several factors – reluctance of the victims to assert their rights because of fear, disbelieve in justice and desire to be at home as soon as possible, and also in the first place the desire of labor migrants to take back their earned money, that is why they often make peace with “employer”, comments Elina Yenikeyeva. The problem rests on the absence of clear legislative mechanism in the field of human trafficking on the national level. We have only one, 128 article, according to which we can bring the perpetrators to justice, but to prove the fact will be rather difficult.

Independently from imperfection of Kazakh legislation, says the human right defenders, any cases of human trafficking, even if they were not deliberately deceived, is a violation of human rights. And remind: these people like others have all basic rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and they are equal before the law of RK.