Human Trafficking in [Russia] [other countries]Street Children in [Russia Child Prostitution in [Russia] [other countries] |
Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children The Russian
Federation [map] extends over 6,591,100 sq mi (17,070,949 sq km) and is
bounded by Norway and Finland (NW); by Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine
(W); by Georgia and Azerbaijan (SW); and by Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China
along the southern land border. The
Kaliningrad Region is an exclave on the Baltic Sea bordered by |
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accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation
in UNICEF - The Big Picture U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Economic downturn, the deterioration of social services, increase
in domestic violence and the breakdown of family structures have led to an
increase in the number of street children in the country. Estimates of the number of street children
range from 100,000 to 150,000, with possibly 4 million additional children at
risk of living on the streets.
Homeless children often receive no education, are more susceptible to
substance abuse, and frequently engaged in criminal activities, including
prostitution, to survive. Without
educational opportunities or family support, youth form or join gangs or
groups and turn to crime. Children
work in informal retail services, sell goods on the street, wash cars, make
deliveries, collect trash, and beg. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 CHILDREN - Estimates of the number of
homeless children ranged from 2 million to 5 million. According to the MVD,
approximately 109 thousand vagrant minors were removed from the streets and
public places in the first quarter of 2004 alone. According to the Moscow Department
of Social Security, 12 percent of street children who ended up in shelters
have run away from orphanages or boarding schools. Law enforcement officials
reportedly often abused street children, pinned the blame for otherwise
unsolved crimes on them, and committed acts including extortion, illegal
detention, and psychological and sexual violence against them. According to
the Public Verdict Foundation, prosecutors refused to bring charges in 80
percent of cases of alleged police misconduct towards such minors. Homeless
children often engaged in criminal activities, received no education, and
were vulnerable to drug and alcohol abuse. Some young girls on the streets
turned to, or were forced into, prostitution to survive. Local
and international NGOs provided a variety of services for the homeless. Many SECTION 6
WORKER RIGHTS – [d]
Accepted social prohibitions against employment of children and the
availability of adult workers at low wages generally prevented widespread
abuse of child labor. Nonetheless, children working and living on the streets
remained a problem. Parents often used their children to lend credence to
their poverty when begging or had them beg. Homeless children were at
heightened risk for exploitation in prostitution or criminal activities. Bur of Democracy, Human
Rights & Labor - Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices - 2004 CHILDREN - The status of many children has
deteriorated since the collapse of communism because of falling living
standards, an increase in the number of broken homes, and domestic violence.
In Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2005 [74] The Committee expresses its
concern at the increasing number of street children and their vulnerability to
all forms of abuse and exploitation, as well as the fact that these children
do not have access to public health and education services. The lack of a
systematic and comprehensive strategy to address the situation and protect
these children is also of concern to the Committee. Experts
See Drop in Number of Street Kids Klimova said that in the Nevsky and Admiralteisky districts
where help for street children is available the number of street children has
decreased significantly. Russia
and U.S. are bound in the illegal cyber-trafficking of child pornography These ragtag kids are Russia’s
street children, most of them abandoned by alcoholic or drug-addicted
parents. Many, proudly holding up the glue pots they sniff to get high, are
drug addicts themselves. Some support their addictions by working for child pornographers,
said Katharine Zaretskaja, a social worker with Stellit, the Russian organization fighting child
exploitation. It’s a similar scene in Moscow,
where city police point to a group of youths hanging out at the Metro train
station at Ilyinsky Square. They wait for the
pornographers the same way the prostitutes wait for johns. “It’s a popular
spot,” Police Investigator Sergei Sokolov said. Stopping
sexual abuse of Russian kids St. Petersburg and the northwest
region of Russia report a high incidence of sex tourism, which is widely
advertised on the Internet and aimed at people from neighboring Scandinavian
countries. Prostitution is the most common form of child exploitation in the
region. Frequent recruiting targets
are street children or children
from dysfunctional families. Once they're entrapped, they may end up in
brothels and red-light districts as they get older. Recruiters prey on these
children's situations, deceiving them into a life of dependency. Children engaged in prostitution
frequently belong to families in extreme poverty, and characterized by
alcohol and drug addiction or a hostile family atmosphere. In other cases,
they are orphans who have made the street their home. - htsccp With their collected funds,
Vladimir said, they will buy one meal, and use the remainder for butorphanol, an opiate analgesic that, at 50 rubles an ampule, is a cheap alternative to heroin. At night, they
plan to return to sleep in an attic atop a building near the Timiryazevskaya metro station. Delivering
hope to Russia's unwanted street kids While it was inconceivable in New
Zealand to consider abandoning children, in Russia, where often three
generations were crammed into one-bedroom apartments with alcohol their only
solace, children were simply an inconvenience. Many ran away, many were pushed out and
some had never known a home, a warm bed or a hot meal. Hot water in Vladivostok is piped around
the city, creating an underground network of warm pipes that made a perfect
winter home for the homeless. While
New Zealanders think their winter is cold, it is nothing compared to the
endless, bone-chilling winter of Russia. Maria's Children http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/160/5/464 This is a population that is
undernourished, understimulated, underbonded, undereducated (both academically and in life
skills), and abused in nearly every physical, sexual, and psychological way
imaginable. There are exceptions of course, but the average government
orphanage is a grim place indeed, understaffed with underpaid and overworked
employees. The result of this hopeless
situation for these forgotten children who are anathema in their own country
is a nearly 25% suicide rate and, without intervention, a life span that
averages 25 years. The children, unprepared in any way for the challenging
Russian life, are dumped out of the orphanages at age 16 years. They are
offered few options in life—cannon fodder for the army, various criminal
occupations such as drug trafficking and prostitution, or work in paint or
shoe factories (which are highly toxic). They are lost to disease, drug and
alcohol addiction, white slavery, and the military along with suicide and
violent death. Russian Runaways
Find Few Willing To Help Them Oleg Mukhin lives with several
friends in a hollow beneath the platform of The Street Children Project in Vladivostok Rachael Hughes from New Zealand
was the first person who began to work with street children in Vladivostok.
The problem was too big for her to handle all by herself, because there were
too many children. - SCCP Médecins
du Monde Sweden carried out an assessment mission
to St Petersburg Letter from Carel de Rooy,
UNICEF Representative in Russian Federation and Belarus However, life in the street was
not an easy one either. “You can not survive in the street unless you are a
member of some group of loitering youngsters”, he says. “And you need to make
your own contribution to the group’s income by means of begging or stealing.
Otherwise, you’ll stay hungry or can even be beaten”. Dima had to do all
these terrible things in order to survive. He was only eight years old at
that time! Aid Group
Alleges Massive Child-Trafficking in Russia An aid group says more than 30,000
children and teenagers go missing every year in Russia, and that at least
500,000 children are living on the country's streets. Sergei Komkov,
president of the Russian Fund for Education, blamed Russian politicians for
addressing the problem of street kids only during election campaigns. He said
government aid to help street kids this year has dropped by 15 to 20 percent.
Komkov said the majority of homeless
youngsters in Russia are not orphans but have fled broken and violent homes.
- htsc Kids struggle to
survive - Prefer homelessness to cruel treatment in shelters They flutter through the Kursky
railway station like flocks of dirt-smudged pigeons, sniffing glue fumes out
of plastic bags, begging for money from strangers and scattering as police
approach waving nightsticks. These are
Homeless Children --
Helpless Victims Of Collapsing Welfare, Family Systems Dmitriy, who has been living in
the Way Home shelter for four years, fled Sergei: A Loss of Freedom. He is
again a helpless little boy as shelter workers give him a bath and check for
lice. Sensing a loss of freedom, Sergei refuses to sleep in the shelter for
more than a few nights at a time. Sergei: The Airport is His Home.
Sergei Mayorov, 8, has been alone on the street in Ivanovo YMCA Social Rehabilitation of Street Children This organisation
aims for social rehabilitation of street children through a centre that
responds to their physical needs and offers various programmes
for their support. Youth leaders are identified among the street children and
invited to participate in a leadership process through training and joint
activities with social workers. Children face street
curfew in Moscow Kaladze is mother to Russia’s street children They’re not alone. Research from a
university in St. Petersburg shows that the number of street children in the
city of 4.2 million is at least 16,000, according to a local newspaper. And 77 percent of these children — some as
young as 9 — work exploitative and dangerous jobs, according to the
newspaper. Many are addicted to chemical
substances. Model glue, squeezed into plastic bags and sniffed, is especially
popular. There are about 2 million street
children in Love's Bridge - Empowering Russian Street Children to Become Productive Members of Society Welcome! Love’s Bridge is an
organization dedicated to empowering street youth in Russia to overcome their
addictions, resume studies and become self-reliant. We currently run two
centers for street children and underprivileged young people in the city of
Perm, which is situated near the border of Europe and Asia. MSF Opens Day Center For Moscow Street Children "These teenagers need a place
to turn to", explained MSF project coordinator Gabriella Muretto.
"They come from all over the former Soviet Union and have ended up on That cold morning in 1993 was the
beginning of Alex's journey into the world of St. Petersburg's street
children. Thousands of abandoned children from 5 to 18 years old live
in the basements, sewer systems and attics of the city. Lonely, cold,
sick and hungry, many try to escape the pain by sniffing shoe polish, using alcohol or even heroin. Many sell their
bodies for survival. Programs in Russia http:/www.rcws.org/RussiaAssistance.html HOMELESS SHELTERS - For hundreds of thousands of
children in Russia's cities, homelessness is a way of life.
International medical organizations estimate that there are 250,000 homeless
children in Moscow alone. The Russian Children's Welfare Society has
given grants to shelters and soup kitchens to help alleviate this serious
problem. During 2001-2002, RCWS was able to
assist the "Way Home" shelter in Moscow thanks to the generous
contribution of Raisa Scriabine.
This facility is run by a top notch staff of professionals who attend to the
physical, emotional and psychiatric needs of children rescued from life on
the streets. The shelter's comprehensive services include medical care,
therapy sessions for children, and training for foster parents and for
biological parents who wish to be reunified with their children. RCWS will continue to help such organizations to battle
homelessness. "My stepfather's an
alcoholic. He used to shout at me and hit me. So I left. Now I live here, at
the station. I sleep on central heating pipes, or on a train. The police
sometimes pick us up, but they always let us out again." No
Help For Chechnya’s Street Kids As a result of traditional Chechen
attitudes, the children are ashamed to beg, but try to earn their money by
finding jobs. Children have suffered
terribly from the decade of war in North Ossetia: Lost Street Children Fifteen-year-old Diana looks like a
child, but before she arrived at the Vladikavkaz Center For Young Offenders,
she was making a living from prostitution. The street girl’s services were
extremely cheap: just one dollar for oral sex. The Center, in the capital of the North
Ossetian republic, will not provide a permanent home to Diana and other
street children like her. After a month, unless she is sent on to a unit for
more serious offenders, she will be sent back home – or back onto the street. Few Choices for Moscow's
Homeless Children Fourteen-year-old
Oksana Smirnova is a recent recruit to Group Raises
Alarm For Russia's Street Children A million children are homeless in
Russia and the nation's youngsters suffer an indifference
symptomatic of a grave sickness in society. Trafficking
for Sexual Exploitation: The Case of the Russian Federation [PDF] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - For others, such as the new
groups of street children and orphans which did not exist in Russia ten years
ago, they are recruited at an early age, virtually sold into slavery, and may
never know another way of life. This is true for countless young Russian
girls and boys, some as young as 12 years of age, who may later become a part
of criminal syndicates themselves and perpetuate this phenomenon. In this
way, more and more people without options are lured into sub-human and
degrading conditions, often for the rest of their lives. - htsccp All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
Human Trafficking in [Russia] [other countries]Street Children in [Russia Child Prostitution in [Russia] [other countries]