), Kazakhstan, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan and Costa Rica for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.
[3] Men and women are also trafficked internally for the purposes of domestic servitude, forced labor in the agricultural and construction industries, and for commercial sexual exploitation.
The Government of Uzbekistan also demonstrated its increasing commitment to combat trafficking in March 2008, by adopting a comprehensive anti-trafficking law.
Uzbekistan was placed on the Tier 2 Watch List for its failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking over the previous year.
[10] In 2023, the Organised Crime Index gave the country a score of 7.5 out of 10 for human trafficking, noting that the government has made progress in protecting people.
Police, consular officials, and border guards referred women returning from abroad who appeared to be trafficking victims to IOM for assistance.
[5] The government provides funds to the Tashkent Rehabilitation Center for men, women and children that have an official victim status.
More than 200 Uzbek law enforcement officials in all 12 provinces received anti-trafficking training conducted by NGOs in 2007, increasing awareness about the issue among lower-level officers.
The government's inter-agency working group on trafficking met five times in 2007 and drafted comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation, which was adopted by Parliament in March 2008 and signed into law by President Islam Karimov.
[12] In 2007, the government reported that there were 360 anti-trafficking articles printed in newspapers and magazines, police officers participated in 184 radio speeches, and 793 television segments on trafficking were aired throughout the country.
The government gave extra scrutiny to unaccompanied young women traveling to recognized trafficking destination countries.
[12] Prevention efforts were increased in 2017, and it was also the fourth consecutive year that the government continued to conduct a nationwide campaign to raise awareness about child labour in the cotton harvest.
And in September of that same year, the Cabinet of Ministers passed a resolution which was to allow additional support to labour migrants abroad with a budget of 200 billion soum (US$24.07 million).
[17] In February 2020, representatives of the Cotton Campaigns international coalition held a meeting at the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade to discuss and establish a cooperation to form sustainable mechanisms for the prevention of labor offenses in Uzbekistan.
[20] On 18 August 2020, the President of Uzbekistan approved the new version of the "on combating human trafficking" law which forbids the disclosure of information on those victimized and the circumstances of the crimes.