To combat the trafficking of newborns, the new law facilitates criminal prosecution of crimes such as kidnapping, unlawful deprivation of liberty, human trafficking, engaging in prostitution and many others.
Pre-Approved World Day Against Trafficking in PersonsHeld annually on July 30, this law reflects harsh realities.
According to Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry, last year, 19 cases of baby trafficking were recorded in the country, in which more than 15 people were brought to trial.
As of 2024, there have been six documented cases of infant trafficking, with prices per child reported by the ministry ranging from $200 to $4,500.
Doctors check the condition of a newborn baby in need of medical assistance at a hospital in Kazakhstan.
The true extent of the problem
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, said Gulnaz Kelekeyeva, head of the Kazakhstan Action Against Child Trafficking project at Winrock International, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization (NGO). Ms. Kelekeyeva said she believes official statistics do not reflect the real situation.
“Unfortunately, in Kazakhstan, there is almost no nationwide research on socially vulnerable children and their vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation,” she said. United Nations News“There are also no accurate statistics to assess the true scale of the problem.”
The only study on vulnerable Kazakh children, victims of domestic and international trafficking, as well as sexual exploitation, was conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund in 2012 (UNICEF) in Kazakhstan.
Online trading activities
Since then, human and child trafficking has moved online, Ms Kelekeyeva warned.
“A lot has changed in the last 12 years, especially with human and child trafficking now increasingly taking place online,” she said. “There is a need for a new analysis of the current situation in this country in terms of protecting children from trafficking and exploitation.”
Human and child trafficking is increasingly taking place online.
She stressed that currently, only individual information about child trafficking cases is reported in the media from crime reports.
Last fall, the media reported on a case of obstetricians selling an abandoned newborn baby at a maternity hospital in Kazakhstan. The doctors were convicted of selling a newborn for $3,000 and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Another case involved a 23-year-old mother who tried to sell her two children. The oldest was about a year old, and the second was less than a month old. The children are now in state custody.
Protect children
Unfortunately, those tasked with caring for children are often unaware of their role in preventing and combating child trafficking, Kelekeyeva said. That includes health and education authorities, maternity hospitals and schools, kindergartens, guardianship and trust organizations, nurses and pediatricians in clinics, emergency departments and private medical centers in Kazakhstan.
“Often, they mistakenly think that this issue is within the competence of purely law enforcement agencies,” she said. “Although it is precisely in this issue that there needs to be interaction between all the interested services.”
Child trafficking is not just about adoption, she said, but also about sexual exploitation, forced labor and organ trafficking.
Digital tools are helping
Kazakhstan’s new law is tightening penalties for human trafficking, requiring health workers to report abandoned babies or face administrative liability, and digital technology is helping to identify such cases.
Since last year, a pilot project has been tested in one of the maternity hospitals in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. Each newborn is immediately assigned a personal identification number, which eliminates the possibility of criminal transactions.
This year, the pilot program will be rolled out nationwide.
Legal Support
Scientific achievements at that time, such as the ability to artificially inseminate, now make it difficult to develop laws to prevent the trafficking of newborns, explained parliament member Sergei Ponomarev, who participated in the development of the new anti-child trafficking law.
He said that cases of Kazakh women, especially women in the southern regions of the country, being used as incubators to give birth to other people’s children have been discovered.
“In this regard, we are ready to study the experience of other countries,” he said.
A Kazakh trafficked abroad returns home
When Eddy Jean (born Zhanibek), 21, was born, he was adopted by a single Belgian woman for a reported sum of 12,000 euros. In 2022, he traveled to Kazakhstan to find his biological mother.
“I don’t need anything; I just want to see my mother’s face, hug her at least once and calm my heart,” Eddy said at the time on a popular talk show that aired on national television. “I still get nervous, especially when I talk about my mother.”
I just want to see my mother’s face, hug her at least once and soothe my heart.
Famous journalist Kymbat Doszhan said United Nations News that she was so moved by Eddy’s story that she became his official representative in Kazakhstan in his search for his birth mother.
She said Eddy’s biological mother asked to leave the maternity hospital with a receipt in 2002, but never returned. In those years, as the country’s economy was recovering from the collapse of the Soviet Union, she said many Kazakh children were adopted by foreigners and taken abroad.
Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry reports that foreigners can now pay up to $50,000 for a trafficked baby. But Ms Doszhan said it was “still very difficult to find Eddy’s biological mother”.
She said the orphanage’s archives had disappeared or contained inaccurate information.
“This was probably done deliberately,” she continued. “There were two meetings with Eddy’s alleged mothers, but DNA testing did not confirm the relationship. When we contacted the boy’s adoptive mother from Belgium, it turned out that she had paid the orphanage staff 12,000 euros.”
Today in Kazakhstan, the issues of adoption are regulated by law. In case of detection of a crime, in particular the act of buying or selling or other transactions involving minors, the matter is registered under Article 135, on trafficking in minors, of the Criminal Code.
The search for Eddy’s biological mother continues, Ms. Doszhan said.
“We are faced with the fact that we don’t even have anyone to file a complaint with,” she said. “Those who sold children in those years have long since left Kazakhstan.”
