TBILISI (UZBEKISTAN) – Anti-slavery groups urged Uzbekistan on Friday to take urgent action to tackle baby trafficking after government figures brought out an “alarming” number of infants being sold in the country.
Uzbek authorities recorded 185 such cases during the past four years, the interior ministry said last week. Officials cited difficult financial and social conditions as one of the main factors that has landed the country on the same.
While the annual average has not changed much from the previous three-year period, trafficking experts said many cases may go undetected. They echoed concerns that hardships triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic could further spiral the illegal baby trade.
“The numbers might go up in case we do not take immediate action,” said Sanjarbek Toshbaev, who heads the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in the Central Asian nation, describing the situation as “alarming”.
Cases unveiled by police in recent months showed families could fetch several thousand dollars if they sold off a baby, according to local media reports. Monthly wages in the former Soviet republic average $300, according to official data.
Tsitsi Matekaire of women’s rights group Equality Now said, “The government must ensure that women … are able to look after themselves and their children without resorting to such extreme and desperate illegal activities.”
The Uzbek government, which did not immediately respond for a request for comment, has been extending help to families hit by the pandemic, said Nodira Karimova, director of local anti-slavery group Istiqbolli Avlod.
Uzbekistan has managed to strengthn its anti-trafficking efforts in recent years as part of an initiative by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to mould the nation following years of isolation and economic stagnation, however, some structural problems are still there, experts say.
Toshbaev added that the adoption process is highly bureaucratic and opaque, said Karimova. This has prompted some families to attempt to buy children instead.
Disparities in the registration of pregnancies and births as well as poor coordination between government agencies have also been an issue, the head of Uzbekistan’s human trafficking commission, Tanzil Narbayeva, told local media in December.
Toshbaev said that many people are also ignorant of the fact that buying and selling babies is strictly against the law.
He said, adding that authorities had only started to openly acknowledge the issue in the recent years, “Not all the persons selling their babies might understand to the full extent that this is a crime.”
“If the government has started to discuss this problem, this is progress for the better,” Karimova said.