11 March 2013

Recently, reports have appeared in Ukrainian media, referring to an IOM report and claiming that ?Ukraine is the main country of origin for human trafficking globally?.

IOM Ukraine would like to clarify, that the report referred to is in fact the 2011 Activity Report on Counter Trafficking and Assistance to Vulnerable Migrants (available at http://www.iom.int/files/live/sites/iom/files/What-We-Do/docs/Annual_Report_2011_Counter_Trafficking.pdf) .  

The victim statistics provided in the report reflects the number of victims of trafficking and vulnerable migrants who in 2011 have sought assistance from IOM Missions in 94 countries all over the world. It does not include information on those victims that have either not turned to assistance at all or found help in other organizations or in countries where IOM does not have victim assistance programmes. Therefore, it cannot be interpreted as an objective ranking of countries regarding the prevalence of human trafficking.

Today, modern slavery remains an acute problem for Ukraine and the country is considered to be one of the main countries of origin of victims of trafficking in Europe. IOM estimated that up to 120.000 Ukrainian men, women and children suffered from sexual, labour and other types of exploitation and has provided assistance to almost 9.000 of them. However, it is a wrong interpretation of the statistical data provided by the report to claim that Ukraine is globally the country most affected by human trafficking.