My research conducted in 2000-01 shows that the Caucasus, and Georgia in particular, is one of the most vulnerable areas of the former Soviet Union for trade of human beings and other criminal exploitation. Such conditions in Georgia are determined by: difficulties of economic development of the region; Georgia is one of the poorest countries in the world; interethnic wars and increased levels of violence and criminality; there were three regional and more that fifteen local ethnic conflicts in Georgia in the last ten years; unprecedented waves of emigration that have rapidly increased during the last ten years; Georgia, with a population of five million, has lost between 650,000 and one million citizens; there are up to 250,000 refugees in Georgia; lack of social institutions and low legal literacy of the population. The government of post-Soviet Georgia has been unable to control or regulate complicated social and demographic problems. That has created the basis for the appearance of criminal syndicates, an industry of illegal emigration, trade of human beings, and pornography.

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refugee emigration slave Georgia social policy illegal immigrant crime