The Caspian region presents individuals with an array of options for those seeking better opportunities. Unfortunately nefarious individuals are well aware of people’s hopes and dreams of a better, safer life and devastatingly use this knowledge to their advantage.
Individuals who fall victim to these criminals typically have been forced to leave their homes due to fighting or instability in their home region. A common scenario is when, unknowingly, the victim agrees to the perpetrator’s terms for safe transport and new jobs in a different country. Once they have given their trust, as well as their identification documents of course, the criminal exploits them in such a manner that it is nearly impossible for the person(s) to leave or escape their tragic new circumstances. Welcome to the new insidious form of de facto 21st century industrial slavery.
The Caspian region has well-documented human-trafficking routes. What makes this region popular for trafficking specifically is the Caspian Sea. Smugglers who are able to transport their human chattel across the sea save themselves time and money to reach their destination. Bypassing land routes is beneficial as they avoid many checkpoints that are intent on finding drug-traffickers and increasingly seeking to expose human-traffickers as well. Over the last decade, a few of the littoral states have created several initiatives primarily centered on combatting drug-trafficking and organized crime that is pervasive throughout their countries. Turkmenistan appears to be the main driving force behind several of these initiatives. Actions taken, however, as a result of the initiatives to curtail drug and human-trafficking have not yet been sufficient enough to prevent victims from living through a horrifying ordeal. Aside from transporting victims across the sea there are several other factors that create the prevalence of human-trafficking in the Caspian region. One of the main drivers is the abundance of energy resources in the region, which results in an increased need for laborers. Many individuals seeking work travel to the region and while some individuals are fortunate and are able to obtain legitimate work, many others become trapped in a system of de facto forced labor, debt bondage, restriction of movement, nonpayment of wages, physical abuse, and sexual exploitation.
The U.S. State Department monitors and publishes a yearly report that depicts trends in trafficking patterns throughout the world as well as the severity of human trafficking for each country. The countries that surround the Caspian region and beyond, unfortunately, factor heavily in the report. Men, women and children obtained in Central Asia, for example, are often trafficked to Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE); men, women and children from Uzbekistan are often first trafficked to Kazakhstan; within Kazakhstan they are internally trafficked for forced prostitution as well as forced labor; men, women and children from Azerbaijan are trafficked not only within Azerbaijan but also trafficked to Turkey and the UAE for the sexual exploitation of women and children; men and boys may also be trafficked from there to Russia; Uzbek men and women are trafficked to Iran, Pakistan, and the UAE; Iran subjects Iranian women and children, both girls and boys, into sex trafficking in Iran, Europe and the UAE, as well as being sexually exploited in the Iraqi, Kurdistan and Gulf regions; traffickers force Afghanistan migrants into slave labor; Afghan boys are subjected to sexual abuse by their employers as well as being harassed or blackmailed by Iranian security services. The victims are a United Nations of victimology, coming from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, other Eastern European countries, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Iran and Russia are both Tier 3 offenders, the ranking given to the worst perpetrators in the world per the U.S. State Department. Both countries do not comply with the minimum standards to eliminate trafficking, protect trafficking victims, nor have they made significant attempts to do so. Russia has a significant amount of foreign labor workers in-country that is estimated between 5 and 12 million persons. Labor trafficking is the predominate problem in Russia to the extent that there have been criminal cases in which Russian officials were suspected of assisting human traffickers openly. Allegedly these officials have protected the traffickers and have even returned trafficking victims to the criminals, in a weird example of an international Dred Scott decision, while other officials were accused of accepting bribes from employers in order to prevent being fined for their undocumented workers. When authorities do get involved, suspected victims have often been charged with living illegally in Russia and were deported without any assistance or investigation to determine if they were in fact trafficking victims.
Iranian government officials have reportedly been involved in the ever-growing sex trafficking of women and girls. Officials overseeing shelters for runaway girls in Iran have been accused of forcing these girls, who were seeking safety and protection, into prostitution rings. Trafficking victims in Iran have continued to be punished for the unlawful acts they are forced to commit against their will. Female victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation rarely receive justice due to the fact that a woman’s testimony in Iranian courts is weighted to only half of what a man’s testimony is. Women are also liable to be prosecuted for adultery even if they were victims of sexual abuse, forced prostitution, or sex trafficking. Their victimization is punished by the courts, which then condemn them to death. The nuclear deal with Iran certainly has the potential to create an escalation of human trafficking in the Caspian region. It would once again allow Iran to export its natural resources. More laborers will be needed in the region to produce, refine and transport the crude oil and natural gas, in addition to building the newly required pipelines. Individuals not willing to pay decent wages to workers will rely on trafficked victims subjected to forced labor. The incidents of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution in Iran are also likely to increase as more people will be conducting business in Iran. Men seeking these victims are not discouraged from their desires but rather catered to. Their craven demand only increases the need to locate more victims to sexually exploit.
Tragically the majority of the world continues to overlook the evil of human-trafficking in the Caspian region. The victims become merely an afterthought of doing business there. Their words and stories of horrific abuse and exploitation fall on deaf ears. Disturbingly, the world has failed to recognize that sexual exploitation and modern labor slavery seems to evolve lock-step with developing regions, especially areas with ample supplies of natural resources to be extracted, refined, and distributed. This means the Caspian region might only become more of a hub for modern slavery and human-trafficking as the economic consequences emerge from the new Iranian nuclear accord. If the global community doesn’t make it clear that emerging prosperity shouldn’t be built upon the back of exploited men, women, and children, then it will have no one to blame but itself for the dark side of the Caspian descending further into shadow.
