This reluctance was shared by stateless persons in small focus groups that UNHCR was able to conduct without the participation of law enforcement officers in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. While no one with a former USSR passport in Ashgabat reported arbitrary detention, they worried that their lack of valid identification made them liable to abuse and discrimination. Individuals the Tajik authorities have recognised as ‘stateless’ in Dushanbe (some of whom may not be stateless under the international definition of a stateless person), mostly said they were not arbitrarily detained, but were subject to stop-checks by law enforcement officers trying to extort money. Afghans among them claimed to have experienced verbal abuse and discrimination quite widely from Tajik society. In Kazakhstan, stateless persons told UNHCR they were stopped by law enforcement agents in the street ‘like everyone’. One individual who came from outside the CIS claimed he was continually detained for short periods. The threat of expulsion is real for stateless persons, particularly if they express themselves assertively. This was the separate testimony of two stateless women in Turkmenistan after they had asked for an answer to their applications for statelessness status, pending for more than 15 years. In southern Tajikistan, threats of expulsion were also reported, and piecemeal expulsion alleged. Interviewees in Dushanbe claimed one stateless person had been expeled the previous week. Section 4.7 of this report deals with expulsion of stateless persons in more detail. There are no special Government training programmes for law enforcement authorities dealing with stateless persons in the Central Asian region. In some countries, UNHCR has included a statelessness component in its training and capacity-building activity. 4.2 Human trafficking Human trafficking in Central Asia has increased since 2000 and authorities in all five States have taken steps to reduce it. A 2005 study by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM),308 suggests that stateless persons run a greater risk of being trafficked than citizens and other residents. Firstly, they have limited opportunities to earn a living and so are more motivated to take risks. Second, many do not have valid documents and may already have been involved in irregular migration. IOM’s first studies in Central Asia at the beginning of this century found that most victims were girls and women, trafficked for sexual exploitation.309 By 2004, it found that just as many victims were being trafficked for non-sexual exploitation and some were men. A study by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2008, found that victims now include women, and men, girls and boys.310 According to UNODC, in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan most victims are now men, trafficked for nonsexual purposes. In the other three Central Asian States, women comprise the majority of victims as before.311 Most identified victims were trafficked within State borders,312 although in Kyrgyzstan, 308 International Organization of Migration, Fertile Fields: Trafficking in Persons in Central Asia, April 2005, available at http://www.belgium.iom.int/paneuropeandialogue/documents/TRAFFICKING%20IN%20PERSONS%20IN%20CENTRAL%20ASIA.pdf. This is also borne out by independent research from within the region, for example E.D.Badikova, Identifying and prosecuting human trafficking, and giving assistance to victims, Kazakhstan, 2007 (In Russian). 309 In May 2007, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child noted in its Concluding Observations on Kyrgyzstan that the Criminal Code contained rules on exterritorial jurisdiction, but they were limited to crimes committed by Kyrgyz citizens and stateless persons. They did not cover cases where the victim of child trafficking, prostitution and pornography was a citizen of Kyrgyzstan, see CRC/C/OPSC/KGZ/CO/1. 310 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 2009, available at http://www.unodc.org/documents/Global_Report_on_TIP.pdf. 311 In Uzbekistan in 2005, 556 men were found to have been trafficked and 203 women. Equivalent detail is not available from Kazakhstan. 312 In Kyrgyzstan, 88% of identified victims were Kyrgyz; in Kazakhstan, 95% were Kazakh; and in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, all were ethnic Tajiks or Turkmens respectively. ~ 47 ~