YEREVAN, JULY 28, ARMENPRESS. For the 5th consecutive year Armenia is classified in the 1st group in the fight against human trafficking and abuse, which means that Armenia is considered to be among those countries which are more effectively tackling trafficking”, Ambassador Vahram Kazhoyan, the head of the anti-trafficking and anti-abuse commission and head of the foreign ministry’s international organizations department told a press conference on July 28.

The US State Department released the 2017 report on human trafficking where the situation in various countries is mentioned.

“Only 36 of 187 countries in the report are classified in the first group. Armenia is the only country to be included in the first group from the CIS countries”, Kazhoyan said.

The official said Armenia has joined all international and regional legal documents regarding the fight against human trafficking and abuse and is willing to actively cooperate with all actors involved for improvement of the fight.

Eleonora Virabyan, chief specialist of the Family, Women and Children affairs department of the ministry of labor and social affairs, said in order to make the fight against trafficking more efficient, sub-legislative acts have been designed and several issues were regulated regarding the commission’s work, mechanisms of guiding the victims and their protection.

“Labor abuse cases are being recorded in the past two years. If previously the victims of trafficking were women, now they are men. Traffickers are mainly their friends or relatives, whom the victims trust. 24 people were victims of trafficking from November of 2015 to 2016 – 5 being women and 19 men. 3 of them were minors”, Virabyan said.

Head of the anti-trafficking department of the police force Vache Hovsepyan briefed on the statistics, saying 7 cases have been recorded in 2017 in Armenia.

“4 of them are labor abuse cases, 3 sexual abuse. All labor abuse cases were recorded in Armenia. 12 victims were involved – 5 men and 7 women. 6 of the 12 victims are minors. For comparison let me mentioned that in 2016, 10 trafficking cases were recorded”, he said.

The police official mentioned that in most cases trafficking occurs when the victim has financial problems and is most vulnerable, which the traffickers take advantage of.