Current Challenges in Countering the Trafficking of Children in the CIS Member States

The goal of this research is to analyze the urgent problems of developing and enforcing the criminal law measures to counteract the trafficking of children in the Russian Federation and other CIS member states, and to use this analysis in working out the suggestions on how to improve these measures. The subject of the research are public relations within which the criminal law norms of liability for the trafficking of children are designed. The object of the research is the aggregate of legislative, theoretical and practical issues whose analysis will contribute to the development of that part of the doctrine of criminal law connected with counteracting crimes against personal freedom, interests of the family and minors. The article contains an analysis of clauses in a number of international legal acts, a comparative study of criminal law norms of the Russian Federation and other CIS member states regulating liability for trafficking of children, as well as the materials of court practice, official statistics on convictions for human trafficking in general and trafficking of minors in particular. The methodological basis of research is general scientific and special methods of cognition, including the comparative legal method and the method of scientific modeling. The results of a complex study of the contemporary problems of criminal law counteraction to trafficking of children are used to develop and present suggestions on improving model and national criminal legislation of the Russian Federation and other CIS member states. The author describes characteristic features of the trafficking of minors connected with specific elements of this crime, presents arguments regarding the expediency of further differentiation of liability for committing it, gives recommendations on using positive foreign experience. In general, the author concludes that it is impossible to improve the effectiveness of counteracting trafficking of minors on the territory of the CIS member states without a continuous improvement of international legal basis and national legislations of the corresponding countries, including those aimed at the unification of criminal law norms on liability for the crime under consideration.