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The Russian slave trade is humongous, it account for 4% of the population(North Korean labor not included) and is able to live in the darkness in Russia. One of the many reasons it is able to survive is if their isn't anyone one looking for these people no one will know/ try to save them. A lot of people recruiters try to deceive and trick are homeless people looking for work or people who have lost their ID's. Preying on poor and forgotten people and being able to work in emote locations that no one would coming looking for is a extreme disadvantage to the Russian government. To many slaves, to much land, not enough people.

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The country is now at once a destination, origin and transit country for sex slaves - part of a 1-million-strong slave force that exists in Russia.

Zhenya, a young Russian woman, was lucky: A client took pity on her and took her away from the brothel.

Before that, there was her life on the streets with Gypsy beggars since she was 12, and another kind man who took her to the movies, bought her clothes - and then sold her to a prostitution ring.

Zhenya is safe now, but thousands of other sex slaves in Russia are still waiting for a good samaritan to come along and save them - which is their best hope, since the government and society in general prefer to look the other way, anti-trafficking activists say.

While Russia may be more notorious for its homegrown cheap sex labor, these days inbound sexual traffic in fact far exceeds the exports, thanks to Russia's previously stable economy, which ensures a steady demand for prostitutes, experts said.

The country is now at once a destination, origin and transit country for sex slaves - part of a 1-million-strong slave force that exists in Russia, according to a recent report released ahead of the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery on Dec. 2.

But the government and the legislature both ignore the problem for fear that it would damage Russia's reputation, even though sex trafficking exists everywhere, said activist Boris Panteleyev.

"Admitting the existence of slavery, in the eyes of officials, would harm our prestige," said Panteleyev, head of the Man & Law NGO and a former prosecutor who has been combatting human trafficking since the 1990s.

As a result, sex slaves in Russia struggle even if freed, and have to rely on NGOs, clerics or police generosity in the absence of state rehab and protection programs.

"Russian criminal legislation is insufficient, and existing laws say nothing about help for victims," said Yelena Timofeyeva of the SafeHouse charity.

A Million Slaves

Russia ranked as the country with the sixth-biggest slave population in the world - 1 million people - in a fresh annual report by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation released last week.

The report put the total number of slaves among 167 countries of the world at 35 million. India was the runaway leader with 14 million slaves, while Mauritania had the highest percentage of slave population (4 percent).

The report did not differentiate between types of forced labor, but said the sex industry was among the main employers of Russian slaves.

The U.S. Department of State downgraded Russia to Tier 3, the lowest in the ranking, in its annual Trafficking in Persons Report in 2013.

Despite stereotypes, even well-educated, world-savvy people can become victims of sex trafficking, Timofeyeva said.

"Ninety-nine percent of people we work with say, 'I never expected it to happen to me,'" she said.

"Many school graduates have high salary expectations, and that makes them easy victims," Timofeyeva said.

But the poor are the main risk group, and a third of women who grew up in Russian female orphanages become involved in sexual labor within a year of starting adult life, experts say.

Outright abductions are rare: Victims are usually duped into traveling in the hope of a new job, and instead find themselves in a brothel, where they are abused in order to break their will.

Supply and Demand

Only drug dealing is more profitable than sex trafficking as far as illegal activities go, Timofeyeva said.

Statistics are scarce, but data from Russia's Interior Ministry obtained by The Moscow Times contained about 900 cases of human trafficking, exploitation and involvement in prostitution over the first nine months of 2013.

Only one in nine such crimes ever comes to light, criminologists estimate, which indicates that at least 8,000 people are currently in sexual slavery in Russia. The figure is likely larger by an order of magnitude, given that most such cases involve more than one victim.

Experts named Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltic states - all post-Soviet regions - as the main suppliers of sex slaves to Russia.

A new rising trend is also seeing ethnic diasporas in Russia import women from their native countries, including Vietnam, China, the Central Asian republics and African nations, to work in their brothels.

One of the most popular websites for Moscow prostitutes, IntimCity.nl, which gives visitors the option of browsing women by nationality, was predictably dominated by Russians (2,300 women), but the "black women" category was the second most populous group with 236 entries. Three Asian categories ranked a combined third with 164 offers. It is impossible to tell from such websites how many, if any, of the women on offer are victims of the slave trade.

The head of the Interior Ministry's anti-trafficking department, Alexei Arkhipov, said in October that the number of Russian prostitutes sold into sexual slavery outside the country has decreased over the past six years because of visa problems and the economic downturn in receiving countries.

But the Walk Free report said that Russia is a hub for trafficking and exploitation in Eurasia.

Most victims are female, but Timofeyeva said certain spots in St. Petersburg were populated exclusively by involuntary young male hustlers.

The anti-trafficking department of the Interior Ministry, after initially providing a comment for The Moscow Times, later backtracked, withdrawing the comment for unspecified reasons.

But a law enforcement officer familiar with the situation told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity that sex laborers make on average $150-$250 per client, which could put monthly revenues from a brothel with two dozen sex slaves at anywhere in the $600,000 to $2.5 million range.

There are, however, expenses to consider as well: It costs about $300,000 in bribes a month per prostitution ring to ensure that local authorities look the other way, and groups that do not work the streets spend up to 40 percent of their budget on advertisement, the officer said.

The Invisible Slaves

Despite the apparent size of the industry, there is not a single state-sponsored shelter for freed sex slaves in Russia.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has a shelter in St. Petersburg and co-runs another outside Moscow together with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Both shelters house all kinds of migrants in need of rehab, from illegal laborers to sex trafficking victims, said Pawel Szalus, IOM's coordinator in Moscow.

The two have a combined capacity of some two dozen people - which, Szalus admitted, was only enough for "the tip of the iceberg."

Government organizations are doing what they can, but no special programs or organizations exist to aid and provide rehabilitation to trafficking victims, he said.

Several Russian legislators used to help out in the crusade against sex trafficking, but none are presently active in the field. The most famous one was State Duma deputy Yelena Mizulina, who has gone on to become a conservative media star by spearheading legislative crusades against gays and U.S. adopters of Russian children.

Awareness of the issue also remains virtually nonexistent. The state does little in the field, though in 2012 the Interior Ministry published a brochure on the matter.

"Sexploitation runs strong in Russian society," Timofeyeva said. "We always tend to blame the victim."

Russia got the worst possible mark, "C," in taking measures against human trafficking in the Walk Free report, which said government activity in the field was "sporadic" and hampered by corruption.

The country scored acceptably on punishing traffickers, with 52 points out of 100, but support for victims was only rated at a dismal 33 points.

Charities are working to fill the void, such as Timofeyeva's SafeHouse, which hold seminars in schools, time and money permitting, and provides art therapy under the JewelGirls program.

But they only reach a fraction of potential victims, and are impeded by the general governmental crackdown on independent NGOs.

JewelGirls' plan to open a hotline and shelter for trafficking victims in Russia was foiled in 2012 because of the expulsion from Russia of USAID, which was going to foot the bill for the project.

NGO workers and police say the situation is still better than a decade ago, or in the 1990s, when Russian girls were trafficked across borders sealed between panels in the cargo area of trailer trucks.

And maybe the victims will yet prod the state into the right direction. At least, that is the plan for Angelina, another victim, who asked for her real name to be withheld to protect her identity.

Angelina, then a college student majoring in accountancy, was duped into working at a telephone sex company that she believed to be no more than a call center.

After a while, her handlers convinced her to work as an escort: "no sex involved." Soon she woke up in a locked apartment, having been drugged, where she was forced into starring in porn viewed by webcam, and drugged some more.

Angelina was freed in a police raid. She moved to a different city, and her abusers were jailed. She graduated from an engineering college and found a job in that field.

"But I dream of working in the police to help girls like me," Angelina said.

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Sex Slavery Thrives in Russia Out of Public View

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The country is now at once a destination, origin and transit country for sex slaves - part of a 1-million-strong slave force that exists in Russia. Zhenya, a young Russian woman, was lucky: A client took pity on her and took her away from the brothel.

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The people who are being exploited in the 1 million strong Russian slave trade are homeless poor and anyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with a recruiter, these people are first lured into to traps like movies or some type of incentive like work then trapped or tricked into slavery. This could happen to any one oblivious or gullible enough to fall for it. And for the North Korean Slaves they are coming there on free will but it is hardly a step up to the slave like conditions back home in North Korean and beats starving in North Korea.

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In this case for the brick slaves, it is not forced. The illusion is a job and that you can leave at anytime, but then your never paid and your in the middle of countryside, multiple day drive from any other major cities. Your "employers" don't need to worry about you getting away because even if you did leave the complex, theirs no way you would be able to survive and then there's the sex trade in Russia. people are trafficked daily, sen't to prostitution rings and sold to pimps and "owners" alike. But that's not to mention the North Korean labor camps that exist in the Siberia of Russia. These labor camps are essentially outsourced labor to Russia where North Korean chop down tree in lumber camps to earn money for their country. They live in Slave like conditions, get paid next to nothing and even if they did try to run away they are in the middle of nowhere and their families would be tortured then exacted back home.

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Squeezed by international sanctions and unable to produce many goods that anyone outside North Korea wants to buy - other than missile parts, textiles, coal and mushrooms - the government has sent tens of thousands of its impoverished citizens to cities and towns across the former Soviet Union to earn money for the state.

Human rights groups say this state-controlled traffic amounts to a slave trade, but so desperate are conditions in North Korea that laborers often pay bribes to get sent to Russia.

North Korean laborers helped build a new soccer stadium in St. Petersburg to be used in next year's World Cup, a project on which at least one of them died. They are working on a luxury apartment complex in central Moscow, where two North Koreans were found dead last month in a squalid hostel near the construction site. They also cut down trees in remote logging encampments in the Russian Far East that resemble Stalin-era prison camps.

But they have left their biggest and most visible mark in Vladivostok, providing labor to home repair companies that boast to customers how North Koreans are cheaper, more disciplined and more sober than native Russians.

"Surprisingly, these people are hard-working and orderly. They will not take long rests from work, go on frequent cigarette breaks or shirk their duties," promised the website of a Vladivostok company.

The home repair industry stands at the more benign end of North Korea's labor export program. Painters and plasterers are not generally subjected to the brutal mistreatment endured by North Koreans working in Russian logging camps or on construction sites.

Though rigidly controlled by minders from the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party in Pyongyang, they do not, on the whole, live in what the State Department in its recently released annual report on human trafficking called "credible reports of slave-like conditions of North Koreans working in Russia."

All the same, they still suffer from what human rights groups say is a particularly egregious feature of Pyongyang's labor export program: Most of their earnings are confiscated by the state.

A lengthy report on North Korean workers in Russia issued last year by the Data Base Center for North Korean Human Rights, a group in Seoul, said the Workers' Party of Korea seizes 80 percent of the wages earned by forestry workers and at least 30 percent of the salaries paid to laborers working in construction. Further money is taken to cover living expenses, mandatory contributions to a so-called loyalty fund and other "donations."

This "exploitative structure," the report said, constitutes "one of the fundamental causes of the North Korean workers' inhumanly hard labor in Russia."

The human rights group estimated that the North Korean authorities earn at least $120 million a year from laborers sent to Russia, a vital source of income for a family dynasty founded, with Moscow's backing, by Kim Il-sung in 1948 and now headed by his 33-year-old grandson, Kim Jong-un. It put the number of North Koreans working in Russia at nearly 50,000, though other studies say the number is 30,000 to 40,000, which is still more than in China or the Middle East, the other principal destinations.

The Russian boss of a Vladivostok decorating company that employs scores of North Koreans said the amount of money seized from salaries had increased substantially over the past decade, rising to a current monthly rate of 50,000 rubles, or $841, from 17,000 rubles a month in 2006.

He said his highest-paid workers now lose half or more of their monthly salary through confiscation, while the leader of each construction squad of around 20 to 30 laborers takes an additional cut of about 20 percent in return for finding painting jobs for his men.

The Russian asked that he not be identified because he feared that Workers' Party supervisors would punish his laborers or prevent them from working with him.

The increased rate of confiscation followed a sharp fall in the value of the ruble against the dollar, a troubling development for a regime that wants dollars, not rubles.

But the jacking up of the amount of rubles seized more than compensated for the ruble's fall, reflecting Pyongyang's desperate hunt for more cash since Kim Jong-un took power in December 2011 and ramped up North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

International sanctions and a Chinese ban on imports of North Korean coal in February after a series of missile tests have steadily squeezed Pyongyang's other sources of foreign revenue. That has left the export of labor, along with a string of state-run restaurants and other small businesses in Vladivostok and elsewhere, as one of the regime's shrinking list of ways to generate hard currency.

To prevent them from seeking refuge in South Korea, North Korean laborers are forced to live together in cramped dormitories scattered around the outskirts of Vladivostok and prohibited from contacting Russians and other foreigners outside work.

The boom in North Korean labor exports to Russia coincides with an expansion of other links between the two countries, including a recent surge in Russian coal exports and the start in May of a new ferry service twice a week between Vladivostok and Rason, a special economic zone on the east coast of North Korea.

In April last year, just months after North Korea announced that it had tested a "miniaturized hydrogen bomb," Russian and North Korean officials gathered south of Vladivostok to celebrate the reopening of Kim Il-sung House, a wooden building dedicated to the memory of the dictator. It had been rebuilt, at Russia's expense, after a fire.

The links with Russia are still far less extensive than those North Korea has with China, its principal foreign backer, and do not appear to violate sanctions imposed - with the Russian government's support - by the United Nations. But they have nonetheless raised eyebrows in the United States and Japan, which want to tighten the economic and diplomatic vise on Pyongyang.

Russian coal exports to North Korea more than tripled to $28.4 million in the first quarter of this year from $7.5 million in the same period in 2014, indicating that Moscow would most likely object to any efforts by Washington to widen United Nations economic sanctions.

Why North Korea would sharply increase coal imports is a mystery, as it has plenty of coal. A bigger mystery is the business rationale behind the new ferry service to North Korea, started last month by a private Russian company, InvestStroyTrest, at a time when few Russians want to travel to North Korea and even fewer North Koreans, aside from laborers, visit Russia.

When the ferry, the Mangyongbong, docked in Vladivostok last week from North Korea it had just six paying passengers. It has berths for 193.

Mikhail Khmel, the deputy director general of InvestStroyTrest, said that "all the noise around North Korea that makes people afraid" was to blame for the slow business.

North Koreans, he added, "are not angels" but don't deserve all the pressure put on them by the United States. "America is very far away, but we live next door," he said. "We want to deal with them normally."

The ferry service only expands existing transport links between North Korea and Vladivostok, the only foreign destination other than Beijing and the northern Chinese city of Shenyang for Pyongyang's national airline, Air Koryo.

Each Friday, skinny North Korean laborers in ragged clothes, watched over by supervisors in suits with Kim Il-sung badges, gather at Vladivostok airport with piles of luggage before a weekly flight to and from Pyongyang.

While presenting a miserable tableau of deprivation at the airport, North Koreans who have worked as laborers in Russia often are eager to come back. Indeed, the Russian decorating company boss said, they often pay bribes to officials from the Workers' Party to gain an assignment to work abroad.

One of these is a 52-year-old painter now on his second five-year assignment to Russia. Speaking broken Russian as he painted Ms. Kravchenko's bedroom wall, he said that he liked the work and the opportunity to earn foreign money for himself and his country. While in Russia, he goes by the name Dima, short for Dimitri.

He said his Russia work permit expires next year and he will have to go home. "I hope I can come back," he said.

The Russian boss said North Koreans work "crazily long hours" without complaint and call him at 6 a.m., even on weekends, if he has not yet shown up to tell them what to paint or plaster. "They don't take holidays. They eat, work and sleep and nothing else. And they don't sleep much," he said. "They are basically in the situation of slaves."

All the same, he added, North Koreans still want to work in Russia, where, despite the hardships and confiscation of a big chunk of their wages, they can live better and freer than they do at home.

"It is not slave labor but hard labor. And it is much better here than in North Korea," Georgy Toloraya, a former Russian diplomat in Pyongyang, said.

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human rights and human rights violations

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North Koreans in Russia Work 'Basically in the Situation of Slaves'

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Squeezed by international sanctions and unable to produce many goods that anyone outside North Korea wants to buy - other than missile parts, textiles, coal and mushrooms - the government has sent tens of thousands of its impoverished citizens to cities and towns across the former Soviet Union to earn money for the state.

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Kim Jong Il, the absolute dictator of North Korea, made a very rare trip outside the protection of his own borders this past August, albeit on a heavily armored private train. The reason for the trip was a meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to talk about forming deeper trade and labor alliances between the two countries. This would all seem quite normal and boring if it weren't for the fact that a) nothing is ever normal when it comes to North Korea and, b) Vice happened to also be in the Amur region at the exact same time as Kim Jong Il. But we were there to track down a different kind of North Korean in Siberia: slaves.

We had heard through freelance journalist Simon Ostrovsky that North Korea was outsourcing its labor force to work in Siberia as a way to generate much needed hard currency for Kim Jong Il's cash-strapped regime. He reported that camps built to actually look like miniature North Korean villages peppered the remote regions of Russia's Far East and Siberia. He also reported on the lengthy terms of their labor "contracts" and insanely harsh working conditions. So we sent a Vice crew along with Simon to see if we could find some of these camps and talk to some of the North Koreans working there.

Most of the camps are very inaccessible so we spent a lot of time on the Trans-Siberian railway to get to the small towns we would use as bases for excursions deep into the forest, looking for work crews. When we finally found the North Korean loggers, their stories were astounding: 10-year labor requirements, living and working out in the bush, Dickensian working conditions, squalid living quarters, inedible food and the majority of their wages garnished and sent back to North Korea to "help the quality of life there improve."

It was hard to believe that labor camps of this sort still exist in Siberia in 2011, but we saw them with our own eyes. Most of the workers were over 40, meaning that they likely had families back in the home country. So if they tried to escape (many still do) the North Korean government could punish them by sending them to concentration camps or enslaving their families in other work camps.

When we found out that Kim Jong Il was in the same region making deals for even more of these types of labor arrangements we knew that we had to show what was going on: a dictator trying to sell more of his people, to make more money, to build more nuclear weapons, that he can use to blackmail the West into giving North Korea more aid, thus enabling him to maintain his regime. And this more than anything exemplifies the absurdity of the modern condition. Or at least the bull goose lunacy that is going on in Russia's Far East.

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north korean labor camps in siberia - cnn

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Kim Jong Il, the absolute dictator of North Korea, made a very rare trip outside the protection of his own borders this past August, albeit on a heavily armored private train. The reason for the trip was a meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to talk about forming deeper trade and labor alliances between the two countries.

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How many people are in modern slavery in Russia?

The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates 1,048,500 people or 0.73% of the total population live in conditions of modern slavery in Russia. This is based on a random-sample, nationallyrepresentative survey undertaken in 2014, that sought to identify instances of both forced marriage and forced labour within the general population (surveys conducted in Russian language).

Forced labour

There is some evidence to suggest conscripted soldiers are exploited by their commanders or someone who their commander has rented them to. There are also cases in which people in positions of power, including prison officials, heads of state orphanages, etc., unlawfully use the labour of people under their care. Due to the position of dependence and power imbalance between victims and perpetrators, these situations can be characterised as highly exploitative. When soldiers try to escape the situation and return home, the military usually charges them with desertion.

Commercial sexual exploitation

Evidence of Russian women being commercially sexually exploited in prostitution and pornography abroad, as well as local and foreign women sexually exploited within Russia, persisted throughout 2015. Russian victims of forced prostitution have been identified in EU countries (Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Cyprus, Malta), the Middle East (UAE, Turkey, Bahrain, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon) and the Far East (China, South Korea, Kazakhstan). Foreign women from across the globe-Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Tajikistan, Vietnam and various countries in Africa-have been identified as CSE victims in the Russian sex industry.

The profile of Russian victims vulnerable to CSE abroad is shifting from well-educated women looking for economic opportunities abroad to impoverished women, frequently with dysfunctional family backgrounds or from state orphanage facilities, seeking to escape their current situation. The lure of lucrative employment, coupled with a new location increases the vulnerability of women. Targeting women who are unlikely to be missed or turn to the police also reduces the likelihood of detection for the small, local, organised crime groups facilitating CSE in Russia.

Despite existing literature giving evidence of CSE cases in Russia, the Walk Free survey did not identify any victims in this sector. The survey result may not indicate an absence of cases but possibly a lack of willingness to self-identify or report this issue. We will continue to work with experts to identify the most robust ways to ensure the issue of sexual exploitation is fully accounted for in our survey results in future.

Commercial sexual exploitation - children

Russian children are reportedly trafficked through St. Petersburg to Europe and from smaller towns and villages to larger cities throughout Russia for CSE. Russian law does not prohibit the possession of child pornography, and reports of children, particularly orphans, street children and migrant children being used in the production of pornography persisted in 2015. Russia continues to host foreign sex tourists, some of whom target children. This has been identified in the north-west regions of Russia (Karelia, Vyborg, Murmansk) which are close to Europe and also in the Far East (Vladivostok) which is close to China.

Forced recruitment - children

There are reports of children being used by combined Russianseparatist forces in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The United States (US) Government has reported that children have received arms in Russian-occupied Crimea or military training in Russianoccupied South Ossetia, however, limited verified information exists on the involvement of children in the conflict.

Forced begging

Adults and children, including the disabled, are recruited from the smaller towns and provinces with promises of jobs, brought to larger cities and stationed in the metro or on the street to beg.They are expected to reach a certain quota of money each day and are punished by their traffickers when they do not.

Forced marriage

In the 2014 survey, Walk Free found two percent of cases involved forced marriage. Evidence suggests that the problem of forced marriage in Russia is concentrated in regions where there is a strongly patriarchal view of marriage, primarily in Chechnya and Dagestan. However, there is limited research on forced marriages in Russia to confirm this. Some female migrants in Russia, particularly those from Central Asia, may have experienced forced marriages in their country of origin and have since migrated to Russia with their husbands.

What factors explain or predict the prevalence of modern slavery in Russia?

Continuing economic decline coupled with ongoing regional instability and cross-border migration flows has created new pockets of vulnerability among both Russian citizens and migrants. Among Russian citizens, increased unemployment, poverty, demands for cheap labour in unregulated markets and a lack of social safety nets creates opportunities for labour exploitation. This is especially true for those residing outside the major regional centres with limited employment prospects who are forced to travel for employment.

Russia is the second largest migrant receiving country in the world, with approximately seven million or more said to have irregular employment or living status.

Irregular migrants who are willing to engage in high-risk social behaviour, including illegal migration and informal work, are susceptible to human trafficking and forced labour into and within Russia.

In some cases, these are not active decisions by migrant groups, but rather attributed to a lack of general education on safe migration and deceptive recruitment. Persistent conflict in neighbouring Ukraine has entrenched a fertile passage for human traffickers from both countries to flourish. As the second poorest country in Europe by GDP, Ukrainian citizens are desperately seeking employment, often compromising the need for employment contracts. Although Russia, as an employment destination country for Ukrainians, has declined since the conflict, it was still within the top five destination choices for Ukrainians in 2015. Some 41 percent of Ukrainian's abroad remained engaged in unofficial work in 2015 compared to 28 percent in 2011.

This reflects patterns among other migrant groups who are willing to accept jobs without knowing exactly what work and conditions they are committing to. Migrant workers in Russia often rely on underground networks and intermediaries (generally within the diaspora) to get work permits and registration which often operate outside of formal channels. Once operating outside of regulated channels, irregular migrants and their families face few opportunities for recourse. Children of irregular migrants thus lack the documentation needed to access education and social services, exacerbating their likelihood of participation in the informal labour force.

Refugees crossing into Russia are often met by a deficient processing system, leaving asylum seekers without robust protection systems. The complex asylum process has seen refugees in recent months continuously crossing borders with little confirmation from the government on if/how asylum claims will be processed. This lack of assurance and protection mechanisms places refugees in Russia at risk. As of January 2016, up to 5,500 mainly Syrian refugees who crossed the border from Russia to Norway on bike began being transported back to Russia.

Negative or indifferent societal attitudes toward immigration do little to bolster support or promote government action on the issue. Indeed, corrupt law enforcement officials enable trafficking networks to operate, both in situations of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation.

In 2015, economic contraction in Russia slashed migrant job opportunities while depreciation of the ruble has reduced the real incomes of migrant workers. This has had serious impacts on both migrant workers within Russia and their dependent families abroad - remittances to Ukraine declined by 27 percent, to Uzbekistan by 16 percent, Armenia by 11 percent and Tajikistan by 8 percent. Job-poor Tajikistan is the most remittancedependent country in the world-the latest figures from 2013 reveal 49 percent of their GDP constituted remittances. In 2015, 25 percent of Tajik migrant workers in Russia were expected to return home despite having no job prospects, creating increasingly dire options. The defection of Tajik special-forces commander Colonel Gumurod Khalimov to IS in 2015 resulted in him calling on Tajik migrant labourers in Russia to follow him. IS are known to be offering significant sums of cash to desperate, unemployed workers in Russia. It remains to be seen whether the drop in remittances and economic recession will affect the prevalence of modern slavery; this will be essential to monitor over 2016.

How is the Russia Government tackling modern slavery?

The Russian Government continues to make few efforts to address the exploitation of their own and foreign citizens. On 1 January 2015, a new migration law was implemented requiring foreign workers from countries outside the Eurasian economic union to pass Russian language and history tests, acquire expensive permits and pay steep monthly fees. Furthermore, Tajik citizens who could previously travel in Russia using national identity cards will now have to produce an international passport and many face a re-entry ban. For those Tajik workers already in the country, this change of law gives workers neither the right to remain nor the right to leave. There are concerns that this new law will further increase the vulnerability of workers in already precarious situations by facilitating their dependence on informal verbal agreements with traffickers and illegal brokers to secure visas and jobs in the informal market.

Russia continues to lack a dedicated human trafficking law; however, modifications to the Russian Criminal Code, namely Articles 127.1 and 127.2, prohibit human trafficking and the use of slave labour. Articles 240 and 241 address the inducement to and organisation of prostitution, and are often used to prosecute offences. A pending human trafficking law has yet to be passed.

There were several legislative developments in 2015. In July 2015, new amendments to the Administrative Code and the Federal Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation entered into force. These amendments now allow authorities to deport migrant workers if they work in a profession that is not indicated in their patent (work visa) and fine the employers for hiring such workers. Employees' visas will not be tied to their Russian employer and workers will be able to change the profession listed in their patent in some cases. A draft article 10.13 for the new Administrative Code expected to be adopted in 2016 requires the government to shut down the activity of a legal entity if it created conditions for trafficking in minors and child pornography. Elena Mizulina, a Senator, also planned an amendment to the Criminal Code, article 127.1 Trafficking in Human Beings, prohibiting commercial surrogate motherhood.

A new amendment to the Labor Code, Tax Code and Federal Law on Employment limiting out-staffing (employment agency work) came into force on 1 January 2016. Out-staffing is work that an employee fulfils at his/her employer's instruction, but for an individual or legal entity, not his/her boss. Employment agencies were able to 'rent out' an employee to any enterprise, leaving them with fewer labour rights, creating loopholes for trafficking and increasing their vulnerability to slave-like practices. Outsourcing now has strict provisions, including limitations on the duration people may be employed as out-staffers, equal pay to permanent workers in the same position and compensation for hazardous work.

In 2015, a shelter for victims of modern slavery was not identified nor was a national coordinator on trafficking in human beings. The government has failed to develop a national referral mechanism that would allow formerly-enslaved persons to receive adequate medical, social, judicial and other types of assistance after being discovered by law enforcement.

The Federal Law on Government Protection of Victims, Witnesses and other Participants of Criminal Proceedings provides for the protection of "victims, witnesses and other participants in criminal court proceedings", but the protection is only offered on a caseby-case basis, and the programme suffers from a lack of funding. There do not seem to be protocols in place to ensure that victims of trafficking are not prosecuted for crimes committed as a result of being trafficked. Migrant victims are not offered reflection periods or residence permits, however, if a victim cooperates with law enforcement, he/she may be granted temporary residence, security and legal aid, but these agreements are informal and decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, aside from established deportation procedures for migrants who have been found in violation of immigration law, Russia continues to rely on international organisations to safely repatriate victims to their country of origin or social reintegration in Russia.

Government

Draft and approve a comprehensive law on human trafficking, using international definitions.

Train law enforcement personnel on human trafficking, with a particular focus on attitudinal change.

Criminalise the possession of child pornography.

Sign and ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and other international treaties and conventions.

Establish a national referral mechanism for identification of human trafficking victims.

Provide the financial and human resources to strengthen the capacity for the Labour Inspectorate to conduct rigorous onsite inspections.

Allocate funding for the creation of shelters and other outreach centres that can assist in identifying and referring victims and providing them with direct services.

Publically report statistics on the number of identified victims, prosecutions and court outcomes related to modern slavery.

Ensure that forced labour and human trafficking are prevented in the construction of FIFA sites in Russia and during the games themselves.

Business

Develop a National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights.

Ensure that migrant workers have legal documentation to work in Russia.

Ensure that migrant workers have full access to their identity documents, safe accommodation and receive a fair and full payment. In cases of non-compliance, companies must work with suppliers to compensate workers, including payment of overtime allowance.

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The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates 1,048,500 people or 0.73% of the total population live in conditions of modern slavery in Russia. This is based on a random-sample, nationallyrepresentative survey undertaken in 2014, that sought to identify instances of both forced marriage and forced labour within the general population (surveys conducted in Russian language).

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More than one million people in Russia today are living as modern-day slaves, Australian-based human rights group the Walk Free Foundation reported Tuesday.

They are part of an estimated 45.8 million people globally enslaved, according to the organization's 2016 Global Slavery Index. The estimate is a 28 percent increase on the 2015 figure. The number of estimated slaves in Russia has remained consistent remaining at approximately 1.05 million people.

Russia appeared in 16th place on the index, ahead of Malawi, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland in joint 17th place.

North Korea was ranked in top position, with an estimated 4 percent of the population thought to be enslaved. It was followed by Uzbekistan, Cambodia and India.

The survey also ranks governments on their response to human trafficking problems. Russia received a CC rating, which indicates that "the government has a limited response to modern slavery, with largely basic victim support services," the report says.

Modern-day slavery comprises of human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation.

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Over 1 Million Russians Are Modern Slaves - Report

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More than one million people in Russia today are living as modern-day slaves, Australian-based human rights group the Walk Free Foundation reported Tuesday. They are part of an estimated 45.8 million people globally enslaved, according to the organization's 2016 Global Slavery Index. The estimate is a 28 percent increase on the 2015 figure.

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Slave to Silence (Modern Day Slavery Song)

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North Korean Labor Camp In Russia

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Saving Russia's brick slaves: 'We're taking them home' | Modern Day Slavery

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North Korean Labor Camps - VICE NEWS - Part 4 of 7