Sixty years have passed since the adoption of ILO Convention No. 105 (Abolition of Forced Labor Convention, 1957), yet a number of States have persisted in using forced labor for economic development, the eradication of which was a driving force behind establishing the Convention. Nowhere in the world is this problem more entrenched and pervasive than Uzbekistan.
Corruption is an endemic feature of human trafficking. It is common to both sex and labour trafficking. Corruption enables traffickers’ often-successful efforts to evade justice. Examples abound: a police officer demands a bribe to ignore the presence of a child in a brothel; an immigration official receives payment to provide a forged passport; a judge dismisses a trafficking case in exchange for a share of the traffickers’ profits; a law enforcement official deports a trafficking victim to prevent her testimony against a criminal defendant; a government official accepts a bribe to fraudulently provide residency permits for foreign workers.