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The Angel Coalition, comprised of the Trafficking Victims Assistance Center (TVAC) in Moscow and 65 autonomous NGOs throughout the CIS and Central Asia has assisted over 3,700 victims of trafficking since January 2003. Coordination of rescues and repatriations of Russian victims is carried out by the TVAC in Moscow where it refers trafficking survivors into a highly organized network of nine shelters located in six Federal Districts of the Russian Federation: Northwestern (Murmansk, Petrozavodsk, and St. Petersburg), Central (Moscow and Yaroslavl), Volga (Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan), Urals (Chelyabinsk), and Siberian (Irkusk).
Since 2004, 87 victims have been rehabilitated in shelters and 727 victims have been treated as “out-patients” by shelter staff. Numerous other services are offered by Angel Coalition NGOs including regional helplines (57 NGOs registering over 50,000 trafficking related calls), informational consultations and seminars (31,051 participants recorded throughout Russia and the CIS), publications (over 100 in 2005-6). Trafficking Victim Assistance Center (TVAC) – Russian National Hub for International Rescues
The Angel Coalition TVAC and its network of 9 regional safe house partners serves as the functioning hub of rescue, repatriation and rehabilitation activities for Russian trafficking victims. Currently, the TVAC coordinates Russian and international rescue and repatriation of trafficking victims, operates toll-free Russian and international help lines, receives trafficking victims in Moscow and safely transfers them to regional safe houses; oversees safe house referral, financial, and programmatic operations, provides ongoing training and capacity building for regional NGO partners and facilitates the Russian advocacy of those partners at the federal level in Moscow.
The TVAC is the global response center for Russian speaking trafficking victims and operates Russia's only 24-hour national and international toll-free help-lines to provide immediate international toll-free, Russian-language rescue and repatriation assistance to trafficking victims in foreign countries and in Russia . In order to facilitate rescues and repatriations, the TVAC has developed an extensive global database of governmental and non-governmental actors around the world who can provide rapid assistance to Russian victims. Since starting operations in June 2003, the TVAC has provided direct assistance in repatriation and finding missing persons to more than 80 people from the Russian Federation, Germany, Belgium, U.S.A., Ukraine, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, U.A.E., Turkey, Israel, Uzbekistan and Great Britain with more than 1,460 consultations given on trafficking situations. The TVAC has also been directly responsible for the successful repatriation of 25 survivors rescued by staff directly at Sheremetyevo Airport following deportation from Israel and Europe.
A late March meeting at the Moscow City Duma brought together experts from theDepartment for Social Protection in Moscow, the Anti-trafficking office of the General Department of Interior Affairs, Department of Social Protection, the Committees for Public Relations and Public Health, and members of the Angel Coalition TVAC staff. The agenda set by the Moscow Duma was to discuss the launch of a city-wide counter-trafficking public information campaign featuring the TVAC helpline numbers; opening a Moscow shelter for trafficking victims; and training for juvenile police on child trafficking. These three directions were identified by Deputy L. Stebenkova as the three main ways of further counter-trafficking cooperation with the Angel Coalition based on longstanding relations with multiple government agencies within the structure of Russia 's capital city. As a result of the meeting, the participants agreed that the Public Relations Committee will gather a commission to assist in the preparation of the design and placement of the billboards advertising the anti-trafficking helpline numbers. Secondly, the Government of Moscow will be requested to provide a facility suitable for a state-run shelter to be developed in collaboration with NGOs. Angel Coalition Provides Training to over 500 Government Officials and Federal Law Enforcement Officers
Over the past 18 months, The Angel Coalition TVAC, in partnership with regional Angel Coalition NGOs in six major Russian cities trained over 500 hundred Russian governmental agents through a series of high level regional training conferences in Petrozavodsk , Murmansk , St. Petersburg , Yaroslavl , Kazan and Nizhni Novgorod. The training conferences were co-sponsored by MiraMed Institute (US) and Kvinnoforum of Sweden and trainers included Russian and international experts from 10 countries. Russian government trainees came from District, City/Municipal, Regional and Federal levels with strong participation by the various bureaus of the Ministry of Interior which has become the key government agency for dealing with trafficking and bears responsibility for working with victims, investigating cases and prosecuting traffickers as well as for migration and border issues. NGO participation was also high, with over one hundred fifty registered Russian and international NGO representatives attending the conferences and media organizations covered each training regionally and nationally.
Over the next three years, the high level governmental and law enforcement trainings will continue with conferences in the Russian cities of Chelyabinsk , Irkutsk and Barnaul and then extending into Tajikistan , Kazahkstan and Kirgistan – tracing the “Road of Slavery” which flows through Russia back to its roots in Central Asia . The extension of this project is co-funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and the US Office to Combat Trafficking through a special appropriation by the US Congress. For more information about this project, please follow this link
On March 31, Ambassador William Burns, the American Ambassador to Russia, made an official visit to the Trafficking Victim Assistance Center to discuss the work of the Angel Coalition and its partners. This visit marks a growth in the cooperation between the TVAC and the American Embassy. The TVAC already works with the international law enforcement liaisons of all EU and Scandinavian Embassies, many Middle Eastern embassies and the Japanese Embassy. To quote Ambassador Burns, “I really admire the work you're doing. I know it's not easy, and ……. you've accomplished a lot already. I look forward to working with you.” Angel Coalition Conducts Trafficking Panel at United Nations – Angel Coalition representatives from the TVAC and MiraMed Institute presented a panel on its work in counter-trafficking in the Former Soviet Union at the 50 th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York (February 2006) which was attended by governmental and non-governmental participants from all around the world.
The Angel Coalition became a founding member of the first official U.N. Caucus on Trafficking with recommendations to the UN Secretariat that human trafficking be considered a worldwide security issue as it is well known that the same international criminal groups who fund terrorism through smuggling of narcotics and guns are exploiting human smuggling in the same way. The first task of the Trafficking Caucus will be to organize an NGO tribunal as a parallel event to the CSW in 2007. Trafficking survivors from six countries will be able to directly address their own government representatives and international delegates to tell their stories and encourage NGO/governmental cooperation in victim assistance and the need to consider trafficking a security issue and not simply an issue of violence against women or human rights, which places it in a lower priority on the world agenda. Major International Airport Joins Counter-trafficking efforts
Moscow 's Domodedovo International airport has agreed to help the Angel Coalition combat trafficking from Russia. Domodedovo serves over 75 airlines with hundreds of weekly flights to countries identified by the Trafficking in Persons Report of 2005 as major destination countries for women and children from Russia . East Line, the airport operator, has committed to strategically placing counter-trafficking bill boards along the road to the airport and to distribute Angel Coalition information booklets containing help-line information and useful tips for travellers on avoiding falling victim to professional traffickers. The rise in trafficking cases as a result of the extended range of travel services offered by airlines requires that airports and airlines join the international effort to prevent women and children from becoming involved in the slave trade.
Best Regards,
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