On Tuesday, the United States added Russia to the list of countries that have a policy or practice of human trafficking.
The list was published in the State Department’s annual report, Reuters reports.
For the first time in the report, as mandated by Congress in 2019, a section on ‘State-sponsored human trafficking’ appeared. Russia features frequently in the report because of its invasion of Ukraine and what the document calls a ‘risk factor’ because millions of Ukrainian refugees who have left their country are at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking.
‘Millions of Ukrainians had to leave their homes… some left the country altogether, most – with what they could take with them in their hands. This makes Ukrainians very vulnerable to exploitation,’ Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at the report’s launch ceremony.
The State Secretary noted that there are currently about 25 million victims of human trafficking in the world.
The list of trafficking countries also includes Afghanistan, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and five other countries with documented policies or patterns of human trafficking, forced labor and sexual slavery in government-related sectors.
The report also includes a separate list of 12 countries that use or recruit child soldiers. It included Russia and a number of other states from the above list.
Moscow, the report said, was actively involved in the forced labor of North Korean migrant workers, including by issuing visas to thousands in an apparent attempt to circumvent UN resolutions requiring their repatriation.
Kirby also cited reports that after seizing part of eastern Donbas in 2014, Russian-led separatists used children to man checkpoints, as fighters and at other posts.
Since the full-scale invasion this year, the report says new unconfirmed reports have surfaced in the media that Russian forces are using children as human shields.
It cites reports that Russian-led forces have herded thousands of Ukrainians, including children, into ‘infiltration camps,’ where they are stripped of their documents, forced to take Russian passports, and then shipped off to remote areas of Russia.
