Part One: Trafficking Protection Mechanisms During War
While fighting the largest war in Europe since World War II, Ukraine has become a critical case study with important lessons emerging for combating human trafficking in war and conflict zones. This article is part of a three-part essay series, War & Trafficking: Lessons from Ukraine, by anti-trafficking and child protection expert, Julia Sachenko. This series will culminate in a webinar in late summer 2026.
On the morning of February 24, 2022, my children and I fled Kyiv alongside millions of other Ukrainians escaping the first hours of the full-scale invasion. Roads were overwhelmed. Fuel stations were empty. Russian attacks targeted routes leading west. By the evening, we reached the Polish border, only to face a three-day line of cars and thousands of people attempting to cross on foot. Women carried children in one arm and suitcases in the other. Children cried in freezing temperatures. Some people fainted from exhaustion. There was almost no food, no shelter, and nowhere to rest.
As an anti-trafficking professional, I was watching not only a humanitarian crisis unfold, but also the rapid emergence of exploitation risks.
Among hundreds of genuine volunteers, there were also predators searching for vulnerable people. Border guards told us later about suspected traffickers blending into refugee flows. Volunteers recalled stopping young Ukrainian women moments before entering unknown vehicles with strangers offering “help,” “housing,” or “transport.” The vulnerability was enormous. So was the opportunity for exploitation.
War changes the immediate priorities of a nation. The focus shifts from long-term governance to survival, including: military defense, citizen evacuations, humanitarian aid, caring for veterans and injured civilians, deported children, and destroyed infrastructure. In such circumstances, human trafficking prevention mechanisms are overstretched and fragmented at best, or deprioritized. At the same time, war actively creates the very vulnerabilities that traffickers exploit: displacement, family separation, loss of income, housing insecurity, disrupted education, trauma, and uncertainty about the future. Systems for victim identification and trafficking prevention must be built before a crisis and displacement occur.
One of the strongest lessons from Europe’s response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis was the importance of immediate legal protection. The Temporary Protection Mechanism became one of the most significant anti-trafficking prevention tools in recent European history. Fast access to legal status, workers’ rights, accommodation, healthcare, education, and transportation significantly reduced vulnerability for millions of displaced Ukrainians. It prevented many people from falling into irregularity, invisibility, and dependency—conditions traffickers routinely exploit. Yet prevention systems fail the most vulnerable.
While a refugee myself, I joined a research initiative led by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, supporting Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs by examining anti-trafficking infrastructure for displaced Ukrainians in Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Slovakia. Despite widespread assumptions that trafficking cases among Ukrainians remain “minimal,” the research identified 13 confirmed cases of sexual exploitation, labour exploitation, and forced begging affecting displaced Ukrainian women and girls between 2022 and 2025 in these four countries alone.
What proved most alarming was not only the exploitation itself, but the structural prevention gaps surrounding it:
- The scale of displacement overwhelmed consular and diplomatic staff in many countries. Millions of Ukrainians require documentation, consultations, evacuation support, legal assistance, and emergency services. Under such pressure, frontline staff have limited time for each interaction and little specialized training on identifying trafficking indicators, trauma responses, coercive control, or hidden exploitation.
- At the same time, cross-border referral mechanisms remain inconsistent and fragmented. Operational coordination between state institutions, civil society organizations, shelters, law enforcement, and consular services varies significantly between countries. Survivors fall between systems with unclear mandates and weak information-sharing procedures.
- In most identified cases, survivors escape exploitation on their own. They are not proactively identified abroad. Instead, identification occurred after returning to Ukraine.
The National Social Service of Ukraine has officially granted victim of trafficking status to only 23 Ukrainians exploited in European countries during the war. Official numbers likely represent only a fraction of reality.
This forces us to ask deeply uncomfortable but necessary questions: What exactly are we missing? Where do cross-border protection gaps exist? Why do systems fail survivors before exploitation escalates? The question is no longer whether war increases trafficking vulnerability. The question is whether prevention systems can adapt quickly enough to reduce risks before exploitation occurs.
After two years of work in Poland, I returned home to Ukraine because when so many skilled professionals are forced to leave the country, who will rebuild it? And who will protect those who remain? Today, Ukraine urgently needs stronger prevention-focused systems, not only emergency responses. These could include:
- specialized anti-trafficking training for consular and diplomatic personnel,
- earlier risk identification at border crossings and refugee reception centers,
- stronger cooperation between governments and NGOs,
- survivor-informed awareness campaigns,
- and better cross-border referral pathways capable of functioning during crises.
Investment in prevention may seem less visible than crisis response, but it remains one of the most effective tools for reducing exploitation before it happens. The need today is enormous. The lessons emerging from Ukraine matter far beyond Ukraine itself. They offer Europe and the international community an urgent warning: future wars and displacement crises will continue to create trafficking risks unless prevention systems become faster, more coordinated, trauma-informed, and operational long before exploitation begins.
