An evaluation of Ukrainian legislation to counter and criminalize human trafficking

Demokratizatsiya, Summer 2003 by Pyshchulina, Olga

NOTES

1. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission), Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States, report given by L. Shelley, 28 June 1999, available at .

2. Ukraine is recognized as a supplier of "human stock" to Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechia, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Israel, the United States, United Arab Emirates, and other countries. According to the Embassy of Ukraine in Greece, there are three thousand young Ukrainian women working in legal or illegal sex businesses in Athens and Saloniki, and five thousand such women are in Turkey. See: O. V. Druz' and O. O. Hry shynska, Trafficking in Young Women: Observation of Women 's Human Rights and Relevant Tasks of Law Enforcement Bodies in Ukraine, ed. University of the Interior of Ukraine and International Women's Human Rights Protection Center (Kharkiv-Kyiv: La Strada Ukraine, 1999), 88.

3. Minnesota Advocates Group, "Trafficking in Women: Moldova and Ukraine," December 2000, 16. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, in its "Women 2000" report, cites the figure of one hundred thousand having been transported across the border illegally since 1991 from the Ukraine. Current estimates appear much higher, however.

4. IOM, "Information Campaign against Trafficking in Women from Ukraine: Research Report," 1998, 16.

5. Nina Karpachova, parliamentary ombudsman for human rights in Ukraine, has also been reported as referring to this number of women trafficked from Ukraine. However, these figures appear somewhat exaggerated and thus dubious to experts in sociology. Still, Ukraine has no published official statistics on the magnitude of the problem, and unofficial estimates of the numbers of persons being trafficked out of the country differ.

6. Vanessa von Struensee, "Globalized, Wired Sex Trafficking in Women and Children: A Worldwide, Dehumanising, Epidemic of Poverty, Disease, Corruption, Collaboration, Crime, Violence, Murder, Slavery, and the Valuing of Unprecedented Profits at the Expense of Human Dignity, Decency, and the Rule of Law," available at .

7. Ukraine now has marginalized women who have been largely excluded from the development of democratic processes through discriminatory policies practiced by political parties, governments, and individual employers. Recent studies and discussions in Ukraine on the subject of women's situation confirm that the past political and economic changes have not been gender neutral. Women make up 54 percent of the population of Ukraine and 45 percent of its labor force. Over 60 percent of all Ukrainian women have higher education (college level and above). However, the unemployment rate of women is very high compared to men with the same educational background (80 percent of all unemployed in Ukraine are women), not to mention the extensive hidden unemployment among women.

8. The term "rule of law" embodies the basic principles of equal treatment of all people before the law, fairness, and both constitutional and actual guarantees of basic human rights. A predictable legal system with fair, transparent, and effective judicial institutions is essential to the protection of citizens against the arbitrary use of state authority and law-less acts of both organizations and individuals. Unfortunately in Ukraine, where the democratic tradition is weak and judicial independence is compromised, individual rights are not truly guaranteed.