Angel Coalition Helps Over
3,700 Victims of Human Trafficking
from Russia and the
Former Soviet Union
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Angel Coalition
TVAC staff respond
to helpline calls |
The Angel Coalition, comprised of the
Trafficking Victims Assistance Center (TVAC) in Moscow and 65
autonomous NGOs throughout the CIS and Central Asia has
assisted over 3,700 victims of trafficking since January 2003.
Coordination of rescues and repatriations of Russian victims
is carried out by the TVAC in Moscow where it refers
trafficking survivors into a highly organized network of nine
shelters located in six Federal Districts of the Russian
Federation: Northwestern (Murmansk, Petrozavodsk, and St.
Petersburg), Central (Moscow and Yaroslavl), Volga (Nizhny
Novgorod, and Kazan), Urals (Chelyabinsk), and Siberian
(Irkusk).
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Dr. Juliette Engel of MiraMed
Institute at governmental training in
Kazan |
Since 2004, 87 victims have been
rehabilitated in shelters and 727 victims have been treated as
“out-patients” by shelter staff.
Numerous other services are offered by
Angel Coalition NGOs including regional helplines (57 NGOs
registering over 50,000 trafficking related calls),
informational consultations and seminars (31,051 participants
recorded throughout Russia and the CIS), publications (over
100 in 2005-6).
Currently, the shelters are equipped
to rehabilitate women and young girls only, but the “Safe
House” project is in a continuous process of expanding and
serving the needs of all genders as a result of international
slavery.
Trafficking Victim
Assistance Center (TVAC) – Russian National Hub for
International Rescues
The Angel Coalition TVAC and its network
of 9 regional safe house partners serves as the functioning
hub of rescue, repatriation and rehabilitation activities for
Russian trafficking victims. Currently, the TVAC coordinates
Russian and international rescue and repatriation of
trafficking victims, operates toll-free Russian and
international help lines, receives trafficking victims in
Moscow and safely transfers them to regional safe houses;
oversees safe house referral, financial, and programmatic
operations, provides ongoing training and capacity building
for regional NGO partners and facilitates the Russian advocacy
of those partners at the federal level in Moscow.
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Angel Coalition TVAC staff counceling
a victim of trafficking |
The TVAC is the global response center
for Russian speaking trafficking victims and operates Russia's
only 24-hour national and international toll-free help-lines
to provide immediate international toll-free, Russian-language
rescue and repatriation assistance to trafficking victims in
foreign countries and in Russia . In order to facilitate
rescues and repatriations, the TVAC has developed an extensive
global database of governmental and non-governmental actors
around the world who can provide rapid assistance to Russian
victims.
Since
starting operations in June 2003, the TVAC has provided direct
assistance in repatriation and finding missing persons to more
than 80 people from the Russian Federation, Germany, Belgium,
U.S.A., Ukraine, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, U.A.E., Turkey,
Israel, Uzbekistan and Great Britain with more than 1,460
consultations given on trafficking situations. The TVAC has
also been directly responsible for the successful repatriation
of 25 survivors rescued by staff directly at Sheremetyevo
Airport following deportation from Israel and
Europe.
Moscow City Duma Pledges Cooperation with Angel
Coalition
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Angel Coalition staff meetining
with the Moscow
City Duma |
A late March meeting at the Moscow City
Duma brought together experts from theDepartment for Social
Protection in Moscow, the Anti-trafficking office of the
General Department of Interior Affairs, Department of Social
Protection, the Committees for Public Relations and Public
Health, and members of the Angel Coalition TVAC staff.
The agenda set by the Moscow Duma was to
discuss the launch of a city-wide counter-trafficking public
information campaign featuring the TVAC helpline numbers;
opening a Moscow shelter for trafficking victims; and training
for juvenile police on child trafficking. These three
directions were identified by Deputy L. Stebenkova as the
three main ways of further counter-trafficking cooperation
with the Angel Coalition based on longstanding relations with
multiple government agencies within the structure of Russia 's
capital city.
As a result of the meeting, the
participants agreed that the Public Relations Committee will
gather a commission to assist in the preparation of the design
and placement of the billboards advertising the
anti-trafficking helpline numbers. Secondly, the Government of
Moscow will be requested to provide a facility suitable for a
state-run shelter to be developed in collaboration with NGOs.
The Ministry of Interior Affairs was encouraged to
assist the Angel Coalition in implementing the public
awareness project.
Angel Coalition Provides
Training to over 500 Government Officials and Federal Law
Enforcement Officers
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Officials from the President's
Administration in Yaroslavl training,
April 2005
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Federal officials and prosecutors at
Nizhni Novgorod training,
February
2006 |
Over the past 18 months, The Angel
Coalition TVAC, in partnership with regional Angel Coalition
NGOs in six major Russian cities trained over 500 hundred
Russian governmental agents through a series of high level
regional training conferences in Petrozavodsk , Murmansk , St.
Petersburg , Yaroslavl , Kazan and Nizhni Novgorod. The
training conferences were co-sponsored by MiraMed Institute
(US) and Kvinnoforum of Sweden and trainers included Russian
and international experts from 10 countries. Russian
government trainees came from District, City/Municipal,
Regional and Federal levels with strong participation by the
various bureaus of the Ministry of Interior which has become
the key government agency for dealing with trafficking and
bears responsibility for working with victims, investigating
cases and prosecuting traffickers as well as for migration and
border issues.
NGO participation was also high, with
over one hundred fifty registered Russian and international
NGO representatives attending the conferences and media
organizations covered each training regionally and nationally.
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Major Giuseppe Battaglia of the Carabinieri (Rome) at
Nizhni Novgorod, February 2006
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Over the next three years, the high level
governmental and law enforcement trainings will continue with
conferences in the Russian cities of Chelyabinsk , Irkutsk and
Barnaul and then extending into Tajikistan , Kazahkstan and
Kirgistan – tracing the “Road of Slavery” which flows through
Russia back to its roots in Central Asia .
The extension of this project is
co-funded by the Swedish International Development Agency
(SIDA) and the US Office to Combat Trafficking through a
special appropriation by the US Congress.
For
more information about this project, please follow this
link
American
Ambassador Pays Official Visit to TVAC
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Ambassador William Burns with the staff of the TVAC,
March 31, 2006 |
On March 31, Ambassador William Burns,
the American Ambassador to Russia, made an official visit to
the Trafficking Victim Assistance Center to discuss the work
of the Angel Coalition and its partners. This visit marks a
growth in the cooperation between the TVAC and the American
Embassy. The TVAC already works with the international law
enforcement liaisons of all EU and Scandinavian Embassies,
many Middle Eastern embassies and the Japanese Embassy.
To quote Ambassador Burns, “I really
admire the work you're doing. I know it's not easy, and …….
you've accomplished a lot already. I look forward to working
with you.”
Angel Coalition Conducts Trafficking
Panel at United Nations –
Plans Trafficking Tribunal
Angel Coalition representatives from the
TVAC and MiraMed Institute presented a panel on its work in
counter-trafficking in the Former Soviet Union at the 50 th
Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women (CSW) in New York (February 2006) which was attended by
governmental and non-governmental participants from all around
the world.
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Oleg Kouzbit, Elena Yurova of the Angel Coalition and
Vladislav Suprunov of MiraMed Institute at the United
Nations, February 26, 2006
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The Angel Coalition became a founding
member of the first official U.N. Caucus on Trafficking with
recommendations to the UN Secretariat that human trafficking
be considered a worldwide security issue as it is well known
that the same international criminal groups who fund terrorism
through smuggling of narcotics and guns are exploiting human
smuggling in the same way.
The first task of the Trafficking Caucus
will be to organize an NGO tribunal as a parallel event to the
CSW in 2007. Trafficking survivors from six countries will be
able to directly address their own government representatives
and international delegates to tell their stories and
encourage NGO/governmental cooperation in victim assistance
and the need to consider trafficking a security issue and not
simply an issue of violence against women or human rights,
which places it in a lower priority on the world agenda.
Major International Airport
Joins Counter-trafficking efforts
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Booklet distributed at Domodedovo
International Airport, Moscow
2006 |
Moscow 's Domodedovo International
airport has agreed to help the Angel Coalition combat
trafficking from Russia. Domodedovo serves over 75 airlines
with hundreds of weekly flights to countries identified by the
Trafficking in Persons Report of 2005 as major destination
countries for women and children from Russia . East Line, the
airport operator, has committed to strategically placing
counter-trafficking bill boards along the road to the airport
and to distribute Angel Coalition information booklets
containing help-line information and useful tips for
travellers on avoiding falling victim to professional
traffickers.
The rise in trafficking cases as a result
of the extended range of travel services offered by airlines
requires that airports and airlines join the international
effort to prevent women and children from becoming involved in
the slave trade.
This letter launches our Newsletter
Service which is to
inform those engaged in
anti-trafficking activities
on Angel Coalition progress in
this sphere.
Please, let us know what you thought of our
first newsletter
(or if you wish to be taken off the
mailing list)
by contacting NewsServ@angelcoalition.org.
We wish you a good read.
Best Regards,
The Angel Coalition
NewsServ
Team
NewsServ@angelcoalition.org
tel
(495)783-5865 fax (495)9154147
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