The Government of Tajikistan does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so, says a report by the U.S. Department of State on human trafficking in Tajikistan.
2023 Trafficking in Persons Report: Tajikistan, in particular notes that the government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Tajikistan remained on Tier 2. These efforts reportedly included identifying more trafficking victims than the previous reporting period and increasing the number of prosecutions. The government continued to conduct trainings on human trafficking for law enforcement and collaborate with civil society in awareness-raising campaigns. However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas.
While the government identified more victims, it referred a lower proportion of victims to protection services as compared with the previous reporting period and it continued to heavily rely on international organizations to provide victim assistance. The government remained without comprehensive SOPs for victim identification to supplement the NRM, contributing to inadequate victim identification efforts and potential penalization of internal sex trafficking victims. The government did not report convictions for the second consecutive year. Despite allegations of possible official complicity in some localities, including forced labor by local officials in the cotton harvest, the government reportedly did not report any criminal investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government officials complicit in human trafficking crimes.
According to the report, authorities continued to mobilize citizens for public works projects, including in agriculture and beautification projects, which may have included instances of forced labor. Although the government publicized the ban on child labor in the cotton harvest in previous years, it did not do so this year, and children continued to be at risk of forced labor in the harvest.
As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit victims from Tajikistan abroad and, to a lesser extent, traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims within Tajikistan. Extensive economic migration exposes Tajik men, women, and children to the risk of human trafficking, which is exacerbated by high levels of poverty. Labor traffickers exploit Tajik men and women in the service, agriculture, and construction sectors primarily in Russia, the UAE, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as in other neighboring Central Asian countries, Türkiye, and Afghanistan.
Labor traffickers exploit men in agriculture, construction, and at markets in Tajikistan. According to an international organization, most domestic trafficking cases involved women and girls in sex trafficking or domestic servitude. Sex traffickers exploit women and children from Tajikistan most commonly in Türkiye, the UAE, and Russia; but also in Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, India, and Afghanistan; and within Tajikistan. The primary recruitment methods used by traffickers are job offers by a friend, neighbor, or illegal employment agencies.
The report says labor migration from Tajikistan has significantly increased, while the number of citizens who returned to Tajikistan has also increased (the number of returnees from Russia during the first quarter of 2022 was 2.6 times higher than the same period in 2021). More than one million citizens of Tajikistan reportedly seek employment annually in Russia. According to international organizations, Tajiks in Russia are primarily employed in construction, agriculture, domestic work, and transportation; thousands of men, women, and children among them are vulnerable to forced labor, and some were subjected to forced labor.
Experts have pointed to the significant gaps in social protections that put rural women at a higher risk of trafficking in Tajikistan; they face discrimination and limited access to education and employment; the majority work in the informal sector.
Tajik children and adults may have been subjected to forced labor in agriculture, mainly during Tajikistan’s cotton harvest, and in dried fruit production.
According to the report, some boys, particularly from economically disadvantaged rural communities, are vulnerable to kidnapping by government personnel for the purpose of forcible conscription into military service as part of annual “oblava” recruitment sweeps. The government reportedly uses coercive methods to recruit young men into the military. The government reportedly subjects some citizens to participate in public works.
The report notes that according to an international organization, there are 10,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Tajikistan, mostly Afghans; the process to obtain refugee status often involved paying excessive bribes, increasing vulnerabilities to trafficking; many face the risk of deportation, even with official refugee status. Tajik nationals may be vulnerable to forced labor in illegal “artisanal” coal mines located near formalized commercial mining operations.
