Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to UN reports on slavery and human trafficking in Donbas

Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations Volodymyr Yelchenko stated this during the UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Ukraine has acceded to the main international legal documents on combating trafficking in human beings and has a strong national legislative framework to overcome this shameful phenomenon. However, let me emphasize: now all these documents cannot be properly implemented in the areas beyond the Government’s control," Yelchenko said.

He reminded that the Russian aggression had made 2 million people flee their homes. "These people are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. The situation in the areas of Luhansk and Donetsk regions controlled by Russia and its henchmen has become particularly difficult," he noted.

Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the UN specified that displaced people often became victims of human trafficking "and some Ukrainians are subjected to forced labor in the occupied territory, often by torture."

At the same time, Yelchenko stressed that those cases remained largely unresolved due to the lack of both safe access for and proper attention from the international organizations, in particular the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

ol