Human trafficking and smuggling is a pervasive issue in the countries of the former Soviet Union, according to Louise Shelley, director, Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, and professor, School of Public Policy, George Mason University, and former Title VIII-supported research scholar, Kennan Institute. Shelley identified three major categories of human trafficking: women for prostitution; men and women for cheap labor; and children for adoptions or exploitation.

According to Shelley, the countries of the former Soviet Union share certain features that facilitate human trafficking. Across the region, there is an absence of effective rule of law to combat the practice, as well as a lack of respect for human rights. These nations also have entrenched organized crime syndicates that use extreme violence toward victims. The several separatist regions in frozen conflict zones provide victims as well as havens and transit points for human traffickers. Finally, the collapse of the economy in areas ranging from rural Russia to the Central Asian states to the Caucasus have resulted in a "feminization of poverty" that drives many women to acquiesce, or be tricked into, human trafficking for sex work. It has also created a market for illicit adoption of children from these nations and for sexual exploitation.

Shelley noted that human trafficking in the region is a relatively new phenomenon dating from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The political and economic collapse created a steady supply of often educated individuals prepared to migrate to find work, whether as male labor migrants from Central Asia seeking work in the booming construction industry in Russia or female migrants seeking any opportunity to escape poverty or conflict zones. Because this migration lacks legal status, it is dominated by criminal groups that find trafficking more profitable than the drug trade. Trafficking depends on the weak rule of law and increases corruption in these societies.

Trafficking and labor migration presents a tremendous policy challenge to the states of the region, Shelley observed. Russia has over 12 million illegal migrants, placing it second in the world after the United States as a recipient of migration. These migrants come largely from former Soviet states: approximately 20 percent of the Kyrgyz population, 20 percent of the Georgian population, and 25 percent of the Tadjik population work abroad, often in Russia. Shelley stated that neither source nor destination countries have developed the necessary policies to deal with issues ranging from the legal status of migrants to the remittances they send home. This failure of policy not only drives labor migrants into the arms of organized crime, it negatively impacts the economic development of the source countries by eroding their human capital.

The issues related to labor migration and trafficking are complex, Shelley observed, and there is no clear dividing line between irregular migration, consensual smuggling, and trafficking based on coercion and deception. The problem is not going to disappear for these nations, nor for Western nations that are also target destinations for migrants and organized criminals trafficking individuals from the Soviet successor states. New regulations, new enforcement measures, and new policies are needed to combat the problem.