MP Iryna Lutsenko: 777 cases of human trafficking recorded in Ukraine this year

The international organizations have recorded 777 cases of human trafficking for nine months of this year.

Ukrainian MP from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction Iryna Lutsenko said this at a press conference at Ukrinform news agency.

“The international organizations have recorded 777 cases of human trafficking for nine months of 2016,” she said.

The parliamentarian disclosed the following data for the previous years: 945 cases of human trafficking were recorded in 2012, 929 cases – in 2013, 903 cases – in 2014, 740 cases were recorded in 2015.

Lutsenko stressed that the Ukrainian national legislation in the field of preventing and combating trafficking in human beings is one of the best in Europe, but just passing laws is not enough to solve the problem.

She links high human trafficking rate with the difficult situation inside the country, “almost a martial law.”

In August, OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings Madina Jarbussynova said that the number of Ukrainian citizens, who had become the victims of human trafficking, including inside the country, had increased since the beginning of the conflict in Donbas and Crimea’s annexation by Russia.

According to her, Ukrainian Interior Ministry and the police also expose the organizers of trafficking, but, in general, the measures, taken by Ukraine in this direction, are not enough.

Jarbussynova also stressed that the increase in falling of Ukrainians in the human trafficking scheme depended on the shortage of jobs in the country.

Earlier, the NGOs reported on 10,000 victims of human trafficking since the independence. Since 2013, about 200 Ukrainian citizens have received the status of a human trafficking victim.