The Ukrainian refugee trafficking crisis demands US intervention
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently told reporters Ukraine can win the war “if they have the right equipment, [and] the right support.” From a military standpoint, the U.S. is stepping up, allocating billions in aid to help the country fight the Russian invasion.
But there’s another war happening in the region that has been largely ignored, one that First Lady Jill Biden witnessed this weekend — a war on women and children. Visiting a school on Mother’s Day with Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska, Biden listened as mothers spoke about the hardships they’ve endured.
The Biden administration is providing humanitarian assistance, but there has been little focus on one danger women and children face as they flee armed conflict in search of safety: the very real threat of being trafficked.
Human trafficking was a problem before Russia’s advance on Ukraine started. A 2020 U.S. Department of State report detailed how the Kremlin-backed occupation of Crimea opened opportunities for criminals to abduct women and girls in the area “for sex and labor trafficking” throughout Ukraine and Russia. It went on to say predators specifically targeted them to conduct forced labor in areas where there was no government rule, “often via kidnapping, torture and extortion.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-ukrainian-refugee-trafficking-crisis-demands-us-intervention/ar-AAXcSKa?li=BBnb7Kz
