RFE/RL ran a story yesterday on a judge recently fired from his position who says he will now support the candidacy of former president Levon Ter Petrosian in the 19 February presidential election in Armenia. Interestingly, linking to an interview I conducted with him on the trafficking of women and children from Armenia, Ara Manoogian over at Martuni or Bust remembers the judge in question.

It seems that Levon Ter-Petrosian has attracted the support of former judge Pargev Ohanian. If you recall from my interview with Onnik, there is mention of corrupt practices by judge Ohaian […]

[…]

[…] The law contains provisions to hand down heavy sentences to traffickers but the legal system is not functioning correctly. I was present at the trial of five traffickers in Armenia last August and as far as I am concerned, Judge Ohanian and the prosecutor failed to do their jobs properly. These individuals should have received sentences of at least ten years but when Gulnara Shahinian, an expert on trafficking, presented the judge with details of Armenia’s international obligations to prosecute those guilty of trafficking, he instead insisted on prosecuting them with old Soviet laws that carried lighter sentences of only two years.

[…]

Though I don’t think LTP has a chance to win, if he does for some reason come back into power, you can be sure that the “justice” we will see is not the kind of justice we are in need of. If Ohanian is a reflection of the type of people LTP will surround himself with to fix our problems, then we can’t expect too much change if LPT wins, nor will we see our problems go away.

(more…)

Infant House, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia © EveryChild / Onnik Krikorian 2005

After mentioning children in residential care in a previous post I’ve just noticed that the Institute for War & Peace Reporting have two articles on a related subject — adoption in the Caucasus. In the first, Tamar Kadagidze looks at efforts to quicken the process of local adoption in Georgia. The article not only looks at reform being made in this area, but takes a look at the main orphanage in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. However, problems still persist.

Marina Girkelidze, 42, lives in the town of Ozurgeti in western Georgia. Shortly before the New Year, she came to Tbilisi, hoping that she would be able to adopt a child at last. “I’ve been to all official establishments in the past six years, and they’ve said there are no children to adopt,” she told IWPR. “Meantime, almost every day they show on television a child thrown away into a garbage bin or somewhere else. The orphanages are overcrowded, and any of these children could become mine.”

Marina decided to adopt a child six years ago and spent a long time compiling all the necessary documentation to submit to the care and fostering agency.

“All my documents are in complete order,” she said. “They even came to see me in my house to make sure that I was eligible to adopt a child. Since then, I’ve been waiting to be called. I have no right to find a child on my own, this would be an offence… My whole life has passed by in this waiting.”

Marina is one of many people who have spent years on a database of people wishing to adopt a child.

“The law has put numerous obstacles in the path of Georgian adoptive parents,” said Chichinadze. “They spend years waiting to be allowed to adopt a child. Imagine how strong the wish and hope of these people is, since they still come to us.”

A children’s home on Nutsubidze Street, in Tbilisi, is the only one in Georgia. Here, children abandoned by parents and orphans under three years are given refuge. The outside of the building looks impressive, but inside the plaster is falling off the walls, the lighting is dim and there is an unpleasant smell in the air. The only bright spot is a beautiful Christmas tree in the entrance hall - a present from a charitable businessman. Only the cry of a baby makes it clear that children live here.

Currently, there are 97 charges in the home. Two-thirds of them are children with disabilities.

[…]

According to official statistics, ten to 12 children are found abandoned in the street every year.

(more…)

RFE/RL covers news that the General Prosecutor’s Office has investigated claims that its workers were involved in the trafficking of women from Armenia. The investigation followed allegations from the publication I work for in Armenia, Hetq Online, that they are, and concerns recently voiced by the U.S. Government that Armenian officials are not doing enough to tackle the problem.

In a worldwide “interim assessment” of the problem released on February 1, the U.S. State Department deplored “modest” progress in the implementation of an anti-trafficking program launched by the Armenian government three years ago. “Regrettably, the government did not take any proactive steps to address allegations of trafficking-related governmental complicity and corruption,” it said in a written statement. The State Department specifically noted that “a government official, who has been frequently criticized by victims and NGOs for trafficking complacency, remains in his position within the Prosecutor General’s anti-trafficking task force.”

It was an apparent reference to Aristakes Yeremian, a senior official at Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General. A series of reports that appeared in the Hetq.am online publication last year charged that Yeremian and other law-enforcement officials are maintaining close ties with prostitution rings operating in the United Arab Emirates, the prime destination of hundreds of women who have been trafficked from Armenia. Hetq.am editor Edik Baghdasarian, who repeatedly visited Dubai in 2004 and 2005, cited unnamed Armenian prostitutes there as telling him that they were blackmailed into paying bribes to those officials.

Yeremian strongly denied the allegations in an RFE/RL interview in April last year. He said he met Armenian pimps in Dubai in September 2004 only to “question” and warn them against continuing their illegal activities.

(more…)

Most readers of this blog will be aware that last year Hetq Online published a series of articles on the trafficking of women from Armenia to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). What many of you might not know, however, is that Hetq Online also produced a 49 minute documentary on the same subject matter that was broadcast on Yerkir Media TV.

(more…)

Children’s Home, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia

Ara Manoogian over at Martuni or Bust has posted a story from RFE/RL stating that the number of international adoptions from Armenia has not been reduced. This is particularly significant given that the Armenian government introduced stricter rules governing the practive after Manoogian discovered that in most cases money, rather than the law and the best interests of the child, determined who was able to adopt.

The bulk of foreign adoptions were until then arranged by local facilitators that charged hefty fees for their services: reportedly between $9,000 and $13,000 per child. The sums are suspiciously high given the much lower cost of relevant paperwork in Armenia. An RFE/RL report in June 2003 suggested that a large part of the money may be spent on bribes to Armenian officials involved in the process.

Labor and Social Affairs Minister Aghvan Vartanian asked state prosecutors at the time to look into the report, and it was his ministry that subsequently floated the idea of removing adoption intermediaries. The resulting legislative changes were expected to seriously complicate a process that was quite simple and even lax by Western standards.

It is not clear why the adoption figures has not fallen significantly since 2003. The latest data was made public following a weekly cabinet meeting that approved a five-year government strategy of helping Armenian orphans and other vulnerable children. According to the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, there are currently about one thousand children living in Armenia’s eight state-run orphanages and another 250 in five institutions run by private charities.

Although charitable organizations in the Armenian Diaspora state that there are over 10,000 orphans in the Republic, the real figure is significantly less. In actual fact, the vast majority of children placed in state-run institutions in Armenia have been temporarily placed there because their families are poor and unable to support them.

(more…)

Following on from the Global Voices Summit in London, I’ve been trying to promote the development of blogging in Armenia among young individuals and civil society activists. Hopefully, 2006 will see the emergence of a real Armenian blogosphere by those working in areas of crucial importance to the development of the country, and by those with a stake in its future.

(more…)

Monday’s edition of Hetq Online, the internet publication of the Investigative Journalists of Armenia, is now up and features a variety of articles in both English and Armenian at http://www.hetq.am.

(more…)

By Onnik Krikorian

Lusine was just 16 years old when she was trafficked from Armenia to the United Arab Emirates. A year earlier she had married against the wishes of her parents, but found herself on the streets when she could no longer tolerate the beatings she received from her husband. When she left her native Gyumri for the Armenian capital, Yerevan, it wasn’t long before she was approached by a man interested in exploiting her predicament.

“He said he could help me find work as a waitress in Germany,” says Lusine. “I jumped at the chance. I thought I could make some money abroad and get my life back on track.”

But because she was technically still a minor, Lusine didn’t have a passport. Her new ‘friend,” however, said he could supply her with one for $1,000. Then, in possession of travel documents stating that she was older than she actually was, she traveled to Tbilisi, capital of the neighboring Republic of Georgia, with seven other girls. From there, the girls traveled to Moscow, but rather than end up in Germany, they were instead was put on a plane to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Upon their arrival, the girls were then deprived of their passports and presented to an Arab who had paid $5,000 for Lusine and her companions, and who now had to work as sex workers servicing clients in Dubai, capital of the UAE. Now effectively in “debt” to her new “owner,” Lusine received 10 men a night on average at a local hotel in order to wipe the slate clean and to secure her freedom.

(more…)

Hetq Online has published the english version of last week’s statement condeming the blocking of the publication’s web site in the United Arab Emirates. According to Hetq’s Editor-in-Chief, the UAE government has resorted to such a drastic measure as a result of the articles he wrote, and the documentary film he made, on the trafficking of women and children from Armenia to Dubai.

The ban on our journal in the UAE proves once again that the government of that country does not allow freedom of speech and prefers to hide the reality of what goes on from its own people. Our journalists have discussed the issue of human trafficking with many residents of Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi. They all unanimously criticized their country’s policy on the matter, and noted that their religion forbids “human trade”, and sexual exploitation. We believe that the people of the UAE should know about women who are forced into sexual slavery, even more so as there are numerous cases in which locals have helped these women to return home.

We call on the government of the UAE to remove the ban and restore access to the Hetq website. We also ask international organizations to pressure the government of the UAE to stop filtering the Internet of any criticism of their country.

While writing an article on the trafficking of children from Armenia for UNICEF, I watched their documentary/public announcement film yesterday. Although mainly setting the context to the problem in Armenia, there’s also advice for the target audience of children in boarding schools and children’s home’s (orphanages) who are considered to be most at risk.

(more…)

A1 Plus says that Hetq Online, one of the publications I work for in Armenia, has been blocked by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government. According to the news agency, when someone attempts to access the site which has been prolific in reporting on the trafficking of Armenian women and children to Dubai, the following message is instead displayed.

“We bring our apologies but the site you are going to open has been blocked, as its contents conflicts with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the UAE.”

In actual fact, it has been Hetq Online’s investigation into trafficking that is the real reason for the site being blocked.

[…] journalists found out that Dubai policemen and members of the migration services are involved in these criminal activities.”

[…]

We appeal to the UAE authorities to raise the taboo off the Hetq website and appeal to international organizations to urge the UAE leadership not to “clear” internet from critical articles about their country’, the statement issued by Hetq staff says.

Hetq Online’s full series of articles investigating the trafficking of women and children from Armenia to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) can be read online here. A documentary film by Edik Baghdasarian, Hetq’s Editor in Chief, and Ara Manoogian over at Martuni or Bust was also shown on Yerkir Media TV in Armenia.