Ukrainian activist honored in D.C. for anti-trafficking efforts (05/26/02)

Ukrainian activist honored in D.C. for anti-trafficking efforts

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - A leading women's and human rights activist in Ukraine who helped focus the world's attention on the growing international problem of trafficking in women and children was honored for her efforts during a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here on May 16.

Oksana Horbunova, the Kyiv program coordinator for the International Organization for Migration, was joined by three other women activists - from Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and South Africa - as the first award recipients to be honored for their work in behalf of women's rights by Vital Voices Global Partnership, an organization that supports women's groups worldwide in expanding the participation of women in the political and economic life of their countries and in fighting trafficking.

"It takes an extraordinarily courageous person to confront this terrible crime," stage and screen actress Julia Ormond said in presenting the award to Ms. Horbunova, who has dedicated her life to combating the trafficking of women in Ukraine and neighboring countries. Ms. Ormond, who is currently working on a film about trafficking in Russia, explained that this "modern-day slavery" of an estimated million women is now a $7-billion-dollar-a-year industry run by large international criminal networks.

At the evening benefit program in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, Ms. Horbunova and the other award recipients were honored by a number of prominent women, among them two U.S. senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), CNN-TV international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, actresses Ms. Ormond and Sally Field, and singer Mary Travers.

The program also included videotaped remarks by First Lady Laura Bush, who spoke about the women of Afghanistan, who "survived decades of war and years of oppression under the Taliban regime," and singled out Vital Visions honoree Sadoozai Panah, one of many Afghan women in exile during those years who risked their lives in crossing the border into Afghanistan to help bring health care and education to the women and children in that country.

The other women activists honored were Inez McCormack of Northern Ireland, who, among her many accomplishments, played a critical role in achieving the Good Friday Peace Accords, and Dawn Morale, a black South African businesswoman who is working to empower African women economically through entrepreneurship and fighting the AIDS epidemic that is devastating many of the countries of that continent.

Ambassador Kostyantyn Gryshchenko of Ukraine and his wife, Natalia, were among the many dignitaries attending the benefit awards presentation.

Ms. Horbunova embarked on her mission against trafficking in the 1980s, when, while working at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, she heard stories about Ukrainian women who were being lured abroad with promises of gainful employment but were then forced into prostitution. In the 1990s she joined in this effort with the international anti-trafficking organization La Strada, and during a Vital Voices conference in Vienna in 1997 she brought the plight of a growing number of trafficked Ukrainian women to the attention of then Sen. Clinton and other U.S. officials, among them Melanne Verveer, then the first lady's chief of staff, who now is the chairperson of the board of Vital Voices.

These initial meetings led to the signing of a U.S.-Ukrainian bilateral agreement on combatting trafficking.

At the same time, Ms. Horbunova successfully lobbied the government of Ukraine to pass a law making trafficking a crime and testified before the U.S. Congress on behalf of anti-trafficking legislation here, which passed in 2000.

Ms. Ormond pointed out that Ms. Horbunova's work was not limited to the policy level: "She set up a hotline through which she brought dozens of trafficking victims back to their homes. At great danger, Oksana has personally escorted trafficked women back to their families, despite threats made against her by criminal organizations."

Accepting the award, Ms. Horbunova paid her respects to the organization that was honoring her.

"To me Vital Voices is like the Golden Gate Bridge towards democracy and human rights," giving her the opportunity to place the trafficking issue on a high-level international agenda, she told the gathering.

"At that time, I was alone in Ukraine," she said. "Today, on this very special day for me, I am not alone." Many non-governmental and grassroots organizations as well as government institutions and law enforcement agencies have joined her and other activists on the front lines of that war, she said.

Her first five years of daily, hard work and "very often, sleepless nights," are only the beginning of that struggle, she said

Later, in an interview for The Ukrainian Weekly, Ms. Horbunova said that it would be hard to state definitively if the trafficking problem is easing or getting worse in Ukraine.

"I can only tell you that right now it is under control," she said. It varies from oblast to oblast, however. In some, like Kyiv, trafficking "is coming down," she said, but elsewhere, especially to the south and east - in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea - it is not improving.

Some towns and villages in the Ternopil Oblast, she said, are almost completely devoid of young women, and the children there appear as if motherless. Many women from this area have left for work in Balkan countries, Italy and elsewhere. Not all may have been forced into the sex trade, but many have, she said, adding that the cycle of trafficking is fueled by the stories told by those returning with positive reports of earnings beyond local means. Those who fall victim to traffickers, she adds, rarely go public with their grief.

"Trafficking will exist until women have the opportunity to earn a living inside of Ukraine," she said, noting that a large percentage of women in Ukraine are unemployed, and many of those who are considered employed are not getting a living wage.

One of the ways her organization tries to combat trafficking is by placing ads for their anti-trafficking hotline in newspapers next to those that promise high-paying foreign jobs to unskilled women. But it's a continuing struggle, she said, with new recruits graduating from high schools every year with little hope of getting into a higher educational institution or into the local job market, which does not exist.

Her Kyiv office of the International Organization for Migration, which has a staff of four, works with grassroots non-governmental organizations throughout Ukraine, with local law enforcement agencies and with international organizations working in other countries.

Combating trafficking through law enforcement channels would be much easier if Ukraine were part of the European Union and European law enforcement structures, she said.

"They have a very good mechanism for information exchange, but Ukraine, without membership in the European Union, does not have access to it," she said.

And the traffickers seem to be able to get visas for their human merchandise to almost any country they wish, she said. "The situation in Israel is awful," she added, as it is in some other countries in the Middle East.

Ms. Horbunova related a recent successful effort in gaining the return of a young girl from Dnipropetrovsk: the 11-year-old was taken from an orphanage by a trafficker - a woman - and sold for $10,000 to a sheik in the United Arab Emirates who wanted a young Ukrainian virgin. The girl spent four years in bondage, the last nine months in prison, before being rescued with the help of some good people.

As with other returnees, the young girl can now be initially placed in the IOM's recently opened "reintegration" center in Kyiv before returning into the community. At the center, which is being funded by the Swedish Embassy, returning women get medical care, counseling, vocational training, and, if they are willing to become witnesses against the traffickers, they are provided legal help and "safe house" protection.

Before the center opened, returning victims usually went straight home, which in many instances had devastating consequences if for no other reason that almost without exception all of them were infected with venereal diseases, Ms. Horbunova said.

"It's much better to stop this disease immediately, rather than have it spread all over Ukraine," she said. "In the case of HIV, we can do nothing," she added, "but at least the person is informed."

There were 254 known returnees in 2001, she said. Of these, her organization helped rescue some, others returned by themselves, while still others were deported.

Ms. Horbunova said that trafficking has taken on a new twist recently. Now there are more and more reports of the trafficking of men as cheap construction and agricultural labor in Europe and the Middle East. Her latest reports about this were from Portugal and some Arab countries.

Despite all of the problems she encounters, Ms. Horbunova still says, "I'm optimistic."

She explains that the reason for her optimism is the way Ukrainians voted in the last parliamentary election. They finally realized "who is who" politically and who is at the root of the corruption and other problems, and they voted accordingly, she said. She expressed her hope that the new emerging political blocs - of former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko - will ultimately bring about the necessary changes.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Sen. Clinton said that, despite all of the progress that women have made, there are still "many women and girls who are denied their basic human rights."

Women's rights are human rights, she stressed, and that means "that women should have the right to attend school, to access health care, to live free from violence, to vote, to own property, to work and have credit, to speak and worship as they choose, to pursue legal remedies and, in general, to live the lives that they believe are best for them and their families."

Sen. Hutchison called on Americans to help others achieve that which Americans, for the most part, take for granted.

"America is the greatest nation in the world to be a woman, and because of our good fortune, it is our duty to help those who do not have as much as we do and let them know that we will always be there for them," she said.

| Home Page |