A woman from Dushanbe has got a lengthy jail term for trafficking local women to Dubai.
A court in Dushanbe’s Ismoil Somoni district sentenced the 28-year-old Nisso Mirzoyeva to eight years in prison on June 7. The sentence followed her conviction on charges of sexual exploitation (Article 130 (3) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code).
Nisso Mirzoyeva was found guilty of trafficking local women to Dubai.
In August last year, Nisso Mirzoyeva promised Robiyamoh Zabirova job in a beauty salon, but the woman she recruited was actually intended for a brothel in UAE.
The 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report by the U.S. Department of State notes that Tajikistan is a source and, to a lesser extent, destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor, and a source country for women and children subjected to sex trafficking. Women are increasingly vulnerable to trafficking after they are informally divorced from their absent migrant husbands and need to provide for their families. Some women who traveled to Syria or Iraq with promises of marriage were instead sold into sexual slavery. Tajik women and girls are transported to Afghanistan for the purpose of forced marriage, which can lead to sex trafficking and debt bondage, according to the report.
The Government of Tajikistan reportedly does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government made increased law enforcement efforts, initiating prosecution of 24 suspected traffickers and convicting 10, the report says.
