Media coverage of human trafficking often focuses on the lives ruined by sexual exploitation, as women are bought and sold, used up and ruined by daily abuse and humiliation. A less discussed phenomenon is the trafficking and brutalization of men for forced labour. This cohort forms a majority of trafficking victims in the tiny Eastern European country of Moldova, where 87 of the 116 identified adult victims in 2020 were men.

How will employment recover from the fundamental social and economic disruption of the past year and what will international migration look like in the post COVID world?

Those were the questions posed at the start of a keynote speech by Regional Director Renate Held during the fifth St Petersburg Labour Forum held in Russia’s second city this week.

As countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia have begun to roll out COVID-19 vaccines, it is essential for policy makers to ensure that migrants – regardless of their migration status - are included in each vaccine priority group.

Although TB has been overshadowed by the COVID pandemic, it is still a major killer with devastating health, social and economic consequences on the world’s most vulnerable.The difficult conditions in which migrants may be forced to travel, live and work, can increase their vulnerability or exposure to TB. 

Almost three million people crossed the contact line in conflict-affected Eastern Ukraine last year. The majority crossed for medical treatment. Hospitals in the region have just taken delivery of 200,000-euro worth of essential equipment, donated by IOM and the Government of Japan