Landmark judgment finds trafficking and treatment of women rooted in discrimination

Content warning: trafficking; sexual violence; reproductive violence; other physical abuse.

On 10 December 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in FM and others v Russia, a case concerning five women from Uzbekhistan and Kazakhstan who were trafficked to Russia by the owners of a Moscow-based chain of convenience stores, then held in appalling conditions and exposed to gender-based crimes.

EHRAC litigated the case with Russian partner lawyers, and represented four of the five applicants. We argued that the applicants were targeted based on the store owners’ biases in relation to the women’s gender, ethnicity and social position. To support this argument, we provided the Court with an expert report, which we commissioned from Women’s Link Worldwide, explaining why trafficking is a “gendered phenomenon” and a form of violence and discrimination against women.

This case is the first time the ECtHR has considered trafficking from a gendered perspective. In a ground-breaking decision, the Court found substantive and procedural violations of Article 4 (the Prohibition of slavery and forced labour) and a violation of Article 14 (the Prohibition of discrimination) based on the intersectional discrimination experienced by the victims, as women who were also foreign workers without permission to remain in Russia, circumstances which added to their vulnerability. 

‘This is a precedent-setting judgment that will have ramifications beyond Russia, given that trafficking is a global phenomenon. The Court has for the first time recognised the gendered nature of trafficking women and the multiple vulnerabilities that were exploited. 

‘The Court also specifically acknowledged the gendered abuses enabled by the captivity of the women and in furtherance of the trafficking, including forced reproduction.’ 

 Jess Gavron, Co-Director, EHRAC 

Background 

The Russian authorities’ case file shows that that they were first made aware of allegations of trafficking against the store owners in 2002. 

The applicants in this case were all women trafficked from Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2008. On arrival in Moscow, their identity documents were removed by their employers and they were forced to work for up to 22 hours a day, without pay. The women were frequently beaten and subjected to horrendous violence. All the applicants were raped during their time working in Moscow. 

All the applicants suffered severe psychological trauma and bear physical scars as the result of their treatment. 

F.M. and A.M. 

F.M and A.M., who are sisters, were 17 and 18 when they were trafficked. They joined a group of around a dozen women working at a store on Uralskaya Street. They were fed rotting food and forced to drink alcohol by one of the store’s owners, R.M.. According to their submissions, the workers were ‘prohibited from talking to each other, being under permanent surveillance by an assigned coworker and through video cameras installed everywhere in the store… (They were) beaten by the store owners… (and) forced to beat each other in front of the store owners.’ 

In 2008, F.M. escaped from the store, but was returned by police, allegedly in return for a bribe. In January 2009, F.M. gave birth to a baby boy on the premises. R.M. confiscated the child’s birth registration documents. Two months later, he separated the boy from his mother, saying the child would be sent to southern Kazakhstan, but providing no further information on his destination. 

In early 2010, F.M. fled to Kazakhstan. A.M. remained in Moscow and suffered retaliation from the owners following her sister’s escape. In June of that year, representatives from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) raised F.M.’s case with the Russian authorities. The following month, the situation of both the sisters was the subject of a legal assistance request from Kazakhstan’s Ministry of the Interior. Despite these two interventions, Russian police failed to adequately investigate the case. While the local police paid routine visits to the stores, they failed to act on clear evidence that the women had been subjected to ill-treatment. 

G.N. and B.K. 

The third and fourth applicants (G.N. and B.K) had been trafficked separately, some years earlier, to another store owned by the same people, on Novosibirskaya Street. B.K. had given birth to two children during her time there. One, a girl, had been removed by the owners and sent to Kazakhstan. B.K. was subsequently told that she had died there in infancy. G.N, who had spent ten years at the store, had been forced to have an abortion by the store owners. 

On 30 October 2012, a group including representatives from Alternativa, an organisation supporting victims of slavery, and journalists from the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, approached this store. Two of the store owners sought to make a getaway by car, taking some trafficked workers, and the children of others, with them. Members of the group alerted police, who collected evidence from the store. The trafficked workers who remained at the store, who included G.N. and B.K., provided statements to police. 

Reports suggest the trafficked workers were questioned by police for up to fourteen hours, then held pending deportation. They were denied victim status and the police appeared reluctant to act against the store owners.

The judgment

The ECtHR concluded that the Russian authorities failed to protect the women, and so had breached their positive obligations under Article 4 (the Prohibition of slavery and forced labour). The police failed to adequately investigate the allegations received and ignored available evidence. Furthermore, no operational measures were taken to protect the applicants, and no cooperation or assistance was provided to the civil society organisations that had facilitated the applicants’ release. There was also a lack of a suitable regulatory framework to prohibit and prevent trafficking and forced labour.

As regards the prohibition of discrimination under Article 14, the ECtHR noted that a disproportionate number of women and girls are victims of human trafficking, and that migrants – particularly those without a support network and with irregular migration status – are also disproportionately affected. The Court noted the applicants’ submissions about how discrimination had contributed to their vulnerability:

‘Because of their illegal migrant status and because they had believed that the store owners were in collusion with the local police, the applicants had been afraid of the police as much as they had been afraid of the store owners. They had not spoken Russian well. The fact that they had been raped and had given birth to rape-conceived children, who had then been held hostage by the store owners, had made it harder for the applicants to return to their home countries.’ 

For the first time, the ECtHR found a violation of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 4: 

‘(T)he Court considers that the inaction of the respondent State in honouring its positive obligations under (the Prohibition of slavery and forced labour) amounted to repeatedly condoning trafficking, labour exploitation and related gender-based violence and reflected a discriminatory attitude towards the applicants as women who were foreign workers with an irregular immigration status. The respondent State authorities’ general and discriminatory passivity created a climate that was conducive to their trafficking and exploitation.’

The applicants were each awarded between 52,000 and 78,000 euros in non-pecuniary damages.