A working meeting was held at the UN Building in Ashgabat to discuss the development of the National Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings for 2023-2025.

The event was organized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Regional Office for Central Asia, the USAID Safe Migration in Central Asia Program and the USAID Governance Improvement Program, IOM office. The discussions were attended by members of the National Technical Working Group of Experts, representatives of various state bodies and departments, as well as civil society organizations in Turkmenistan.

The event was opened by the UNODC National Program Coordinator Chary Ataev, who noted the importance of Turkmenistan's accession to a number of conventions aimed at combating human trafficking, smuggling and export of migrants.

Timur Dosmamedov, head of the IOM office, in his speech highlighted the important directions of the past NAP, emphasizing the importance of discussing the current plan as a joint tool to combat human trafficking.

Further, USAID Head for Central Asia Eleanor Valentine addressed the audience via video link. Calling trafficking in human beings one of the types of transnational crime, which is the main factor hindering overall development, she noted the need to solve the problem with an integrated approach, as well as improving the current system of actions.

“We are facing a serious task to combat human trafficking, we are discussing a document providing for a multilateral format in solving this problem,” Chary Ataev, UNODC national program coordinator, said in an interview with ORIENT, “The main goal is to strengthen interaction with authorities, the government sector, public organizations of Turkmenistan in order to provide timely support to victims of human trafficking, to prevent this crime by identifying vulnerable groups that may be in this situation.

Representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office, the State Migration Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs also spoke at the meeting, familiarizing the audience with the ongoing work to improve the Law of Turkmenistan "On Combating Human Trafficking" and other regulatory legal acts.

According to judicial statistics, the indicators on this issue of the total number of all cases considered for 2019 are 0.03%, for 2020 - 0.03%, for 2021-2022. - equal to zero. The fight against human trafficking is carried out in two main areas:

− Prevention: by conducting various educational conversations with students of secondary and higher educational institutions, information campaigns about the rejection of tempting offers from strangers about work, study or marriage abroad.

− Prevention - through the detection of criminal organizations involved in human trafficking.

Gulya Choreklieva, chairman of the Yenme NGO, said: “24-hour hotlines in the capital and regions of the country enable citizens to get advice on any question about the risks that they may expect abroad.”

The new National Action Plan aims to improve the system of combating human trafficking.

− We assessed the significance of the previous NAP. The previous events will also be transferred to the new plan, but will be supplemented with appropriate amendments, Chary Ataev added.

Artur PETROSYANTS