by Natal’ia Abubikirova, executive director of the Association of Crisis Centers The issue of human trafficking touches and can touch anyone: women, men, girls, and boys. Nonetheless, according to the data we have (OSCE materials from 1999, accessible at www.cia.gov/csi/monograph/women/trafficking.pdf), the majority of victims of trafficking are women and girls -- as is also the case with domestic violence.

An Interview by Tatyana Fedyaeva Ludmila Zavadskaya is well known, both at home and abroad, as a women’s rights advocate. She has consistently pursued her goals at the highest levels, as a deputy in the State Duma’s Fifth Convocation and as a leader of the women’s movement. Currently, she heads up the American Bar Association’s Central and East European Law Initiative in Russia.

By Galina Petriashvili, journalist Some three centuries ago the slave trade was lively everywhere in these parts. To be precise, it actually happened in Istanbul, while both sides of the Caucasus mountain range is where the initial work-up and processing took place. A mass of slaves were brought here from the neighboring large areas – Armenia, Cherkassia, Adygei, Ukraine and Russia – before distributing them to the enormous slave market in what is now Turkey and Iran.

by Zhanna Borozdina, Irina Sokolova Unemployment, poverty and a lack of social protection are as much a part of Kazakhstan as they are of any other post-socialist country that is having a difficult time making the transition to a market economy.

by Ekaterina Khlopovskikh, Editor-in Chief of the non-governmental information agency Turkiston Press Uzbekistan's criminal code contains no regulations against the trafficking of women.