Human Traffickers Increasing Sales of Central Asian Women to Arab Sheikhs

The number of the women and girls taken from the Central Asian republics and sold to Arab sheikhs has sharply risen after the collapse of the former Soviet Union in early 1990s, media reports said.

Financial necessity amid an extended economic crisis is breaking down the taboos which previously prevented the Central Asian women and girls from traveling to Arab countries for engaging in immoral affairs, Kyrgyz news and analytical website White Ship reported on Monday.

The website noted that the number of illegitimate children in the Central Asia accounts for 31 percent of the children population. This is while the same figure was 12.7 percent in 1989.

In Uzbekistan, the economic crisis and unstable family relations have forced women and girls travel to Arab states to gain money, it said.

In Tajikistan, the women choose selling themselves in Arab countries in the hope of gaining money for their university fees without considering its repercussions, it said.

The White Ship said that the same situation is true with Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian countries.

The Persian Gulf Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait are destinations for the women trafficked for the purposes of labor and commercial sexual exploitation, although most of these females trafficked to the Arab Sheikhdoms are made sex slaves.