The number of individuals imprisoned in Armenia for human trafficking and
officially identified as victims of the illegal practice has more than doubled
this year, a senior police official said on Friday.



According to Colonel Hunan Poghosian, head of a feared police department tasked
with combating organized crime, Armenian law-enforcement authorities have
prosecuted 17 persons on relevant charges during the first ten months of this
year, up from ten such cases registered in last year. He said ten of those
individuals have already been convicted and given prison sentences by local
courts. The police reported only three such convictions in 2007.



Poghosian portrayed the police statistics as further proof of the toughening of
the Armenian government’s fight against human trafficking. The government
launched a new three-year plan of anti-trafficking actions late last year. The
Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian also formed a special inter-agency body
coordinating the crackdown.



The Armenian authorities began tackling the problem in 2004 under pressure from
the United States which has repeatedly described Armenia has a major source of
illegal transport of women for sexual exploitation abroad. But despite recent
years’ government efforts, Armenia remains on a special “watch list” of nations
which the U.S. State Department says are not doing enough to combat trafficking.




The police data show the number of mainly female Armenians officially recognized
as “victims” of human trafficking soaring from 12 in 2007 to 37 in
January-October 2008. Poghosian said 20 women have been sent this year to
special rehabilitation centers run by two non-governmental organizations. One
woman was repatriated from the United Arab Emirates, the main destination of
trafficking victims, with the help of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, he said.




Poghosian also told reporters that the Armenian police have registered ten
trafficking cases, virtually all of them involving sex trade, in the past ten
months. Eight of them have already been solved, he said without elaboration.