International Labour Organization Project Coordinates South Caucasus Anti-Trafficking Measures.

The project offers measures leading to a long-term perspective against trafficking in human beings in the Southern Caucasus by contributing to and enhancing National Action Plans (NAP) and the legal framework against Trafficking in Human Beings in all three countries.

The project aims to enhance NAP against Trafficking in Human Beings in all countries as well as to establish a supporting framework necessary for their implementation; to prevent Trafficking in Human Beings through awareness raising and capacity building and the involvement of the labor market institutions in particular employers organizations and trade unions; to increase the capacity of national authorities to detect and prosecute criminal offences linked to all forms of trafficking in human beings, and to improve victim identification, protection and assistance mechanisms.

Much attention is also given to the task of raising the awareness of potential victims and involving workers and employers in preventive action. All these steps should improve the identification, protection and assistance of victims trafficked for the purpose of sexual and, more importantly, labor exploitation. Since human trafficking mainly occurs in the context of irregular migration, the project proposes a range of measures that aim at promoting legal migration. It will contribute to increased social partnership through the tripartite system, dialogue and cooperation among government agencies, social partners and NGOs in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia as well as major destination countries.

Funded under the European Commission, the project will be implemented over a period of two years. Additional co-funding will be provided by ILO and partner organizations.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have witnessed major flows of labor migrants, leaving through regular and irregular channels to look for employment. Many of them work abroad without valid work permits. Major destination countries for migrants from this region are the Russian Federation, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic.

For many families in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, money sent home by migrants working abroad is an indispensable source of income to make ends meet. Higher wages paid in destination countries attract many workers especially in situations of widespread unemployment or underemployment in their home countries and the lack of decent work. In countries of destination, employers demand for cheap and flexible workers to fill jobs that often do not attract national workers, fuels migration.

The lack of sufficient legal migration channels contributes to the vulnerability of migrant workers, along with their lack of access to trustworthy and realistic information about working conditions abroad. Smugglers and traffickers exploit the bottleneck by promising lucrative jobs abroad that either do not exist or turn out to be very different in reality. Some unscrupulous employers reap high profits from the exploitation of irregular migrant workers who are unaware of their rights or are afraid to denounce their exploiters. The distinctions between human trafficking and smuggling, forced labor and substandard working conditions are often difficult to make in practice. However, several mechanisms have been documented that are used to keep migrant workers in a situation of dependence and exploitation, such as retention of identity documents, threats of deportation if the person is in an irregular status, debt bondage, violence or restriction of the freedom of movement. Reliable estimates on the number of trafficking victims do not exist, however, prosecution of individual cases is under way in each of the three countries.