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The war in Ukraine has been raging for six months. The number of people who have fled the war in Ukraine only to Europe has passed 6.3 million while more than 6.6 million were displaced internally within Ukraine. A considerable number of countries, first and foremost Ukraine’s neighbouring countries, but also other countries, including EU members that have been most affected by the influx of people fleeing the war, have made significant efforts to respond to their arrival.

So far, the incidence of human trafficking cases among those fleeing the war in Ukraine has remained insignificant. Still, people who fled the conflict are seeing their personal resources (be of financial or emotional nature) depleted with grimmer perspectives. As their displacement protracts, their vulnerability to exploitation, including trafficking, increases. These vulnerabilities need to be addressed now to avert the descent of a secondary crisis among displaced populations in their host communities later on. The persisting nature of the risks is well illustrated e.g. by ‘huge spikes’ in online searches across multiple languages and countries for explicit content and sexual services from Ukrainian women and girls (OSCE, 2022). 

The existing research by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) has demonstrated how people fleeing the conflict become vulnerable to human trafficking.

In this Policy Brief, we examine the nature of these vulnerabilities and provide guidance as to where the countries hosting the people displaced by the war need to invest their attention and efforts to tackle the increased dangers of human trafficking.

The Policy Brief was prepared by the Anti-trafficking Programme of ICMPD in the framework of the “Prague Process: Dialogue, Analyses and Training in Action” initiative, a component of the Migration Partnership Facility, with the assistance of the European Union.

The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors and in no way represent the views of the European Union.

Original title: "Prozesse der Arbeitsmarktintegration von Geflüchteten in Österreich. Forschungsbericht der dritten Welle des FIMAS-Flüchtlingssurveys: FIMAS+INTEGRATION2"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

External author: Valentin Daur          

Original title: "Prozesse der Arbeitsmarktintegration von Geflüchteten in Österreich. Kurzbericht zur Datenerhebung 2017/2018 (2. Welle) im Projekt FIMAS+INTEGRATION"

This study is to an extent a follow-up of a study EUROMED Migration IV programme carried out for the same subregions
in 2015-2016. It takes a different approach but with the same goal of developing a better understanding of
the reality and constraints of traditional and other media and how these elements affect their capacity to tell the
“migration story”.
More specifically, this study investigates how media coverage in some European countries of migration has changed
over the course of the 2019-2020 period, including the impact of social media on migration narratives, polarisation
and journalism, the influence of political dynamics on the media landscape and vice-versa, and the impact of
COVID-19 on migration narratives.

External author: Chris Elliott

Original title: "Analyse der Zusammenhänge zwischen Schutz, Entwicklungschancen und Entscheidungen über irreguläre Migration in einem Transitland"

Eleni Diker, Kevin O’Dell, Katrin Marchand, Sevinj Mastiyeva

The recent European Commission Communication Attracting Skills and Talent to the EU outlined an ambitious agenda of steps to strengthen the Union’s ability to attract and retain international workers, including a proposed EU Youth Mobility Scheme. With the Commission set to explore the feasibility of developing such a scheme, this policy brief contains some initial thoughts on the potential of an interim scheme to support an enabling environment for the bigger policy framework being worked on by the European Commission. A more incremental, low-risk pilot Student Working Holiday Visa scheme would allow for a “proof of concept” that international students want to travel and work in Europe, that they will take up jobs in sectors with seasonal labour shortages and that they will thereafter return to their home country to complete their studies.

With irregular migration high on the EU agenda, governments have increasingly recognized the potential of intervening before and while migrants embark on an irregular journey and providing them with information through awareness-raising activities. Information campaigns thus represent a significant field of investment and action: Individual EU Member States and the European Commission commissioned over 100 migration information campaigns in countries of origin and transit during the 2014-2019 period alone. This policy brief explores how information campaigns can be implemented and further studied to improve their efficacy.

The purpose of this ICAT brief is to shed light on the concept of vulnerability and the different dimensions and factors that make a person vulnerable to trafficking in persons while providing recommendations to relevant stakeholders in addressing those factors and mitigating the related risks.

Author: Inter-Agency Coordination Group against TIP (ICAT)