Russia set to combat slave trade

Russia is going actively to combat slave trade, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov told the 11th economic forum of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, gathered in Prague, reports the Press and Information Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"We are concerned over the increasing scale of this criminal business and are going actively to co-operate in the prevention and ending of slave trade", he said.

In the opinion of Moscow, the root causes of slave trade are to be eliminated - the stable demand for "slave traffic", feminisation of poverty and unemployment, as well as the gap in the level of economic development between the countries of origin and destination of slave trade.

Denisov stressed that all OSCE member states should observe the obligations in the fight against prostitution and the economic associations keeping up sexual exploitation.

The Russian deputy foreign minister also recalled that at the Berlin conference in 2002 the OSCE countries adopted the decision that the countries of origin and destination of "slave traffic" shall bear equal responsibility for inaction in cutting short the phenomenon.