On April 6, U.S. Embassy Charge d’Affaires Sheila Gwaltney and Ukrainian Deputy Minister of the Interior Gennadiy Moskal signed an agreement transferring $110,000 worth of new computer equipment to the Trafficking in Persons Department within the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior established the Trafficking in Persons Department in March of this year. Through the transfer, this Department will receive 27 sets of computer equipment, including desktop computers, still cameras, fax machines and digital scanners.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) served as the lead agency in the transfer. The equipment was funded through U.S. congressional support for the Trafficking in Human Beings Task Force of the Southeastern Europe Cooperative Initiative (SECI) Center. SECI, headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, is a twelve-nation group created in 1999 to combat transnational crimes such as trafficking in persons and drugs. As a SECI observer country, Ukraine has been a major contributing partner to the SECI Center’s Trafficking in Human Beings Task Force.

According to SECI estimates, 400,000 women have been trafficked from Ukraine over the last ten years, making Ukraine a “source” country whose citizens are most often victims of the main human trafficking routes.

In her remarks, Ms. Gwaltney commended the Ministry of Interior for making the fight against trafficking in persons a top priority and expressed hope that the new equipment would help the Trafficking in Persons Department become “the premier investigative body in Ukraine for addressing trafficking in persons crimes.”

Deputy Minister Moskal thanked the U.S. government for its support and detailed the work of the new Department, which he said would focus strictly on trafficking in persons and related crimes.

Also present were Jeffrey Labovitz, Chief of Mission of the International Organization of Migration (IOM) in Ukraine, Mykhailo Andriyenko, chief of the new Trafficking in Persons Department at the Ministry of Interior, and Danyl Klyuchnikov, the department’s deputy chief.