On her first day of work, Adau realised she had made a big mistake.
We got our uniforms, not even knowing exactly what we were going to do. From the first day of work we were taken to the drones factory. We stepped in and we saw drones everywhere and people working. Then they took us to our different work stations.
Twenty-three-years-old and originally from South Sudan, Adau says last year she was lured to the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, on the promise of a full-time job.
She had applied to the Alabuga Start programme, a recruitment scheme targeting 18-to-22-year-old women, mostly from Africa but also increasingly from Latin America and South-East Asia. It promises participants professional training in areas including logistics, catering and hospitality.
But the programme has been accused of using deception in its recruitment practices, making its young recruits work in dangerous conditions for less pay than advertised. The programme denies these allegations but has not denied that some employees were involved in the production of drones.
Alabuga Start has recently made headlines after South African influencers were accused of promoting human trafficking through the initiative. The South African government even warned citizens about participating in the programme.
Adau highlighted her distress about the conditions, claiming that she was subjected to hazardous chemicals in the factory that left her skin peeling and burning.
She also described a terrifying incident where the Alabuga facility was targeted during a drone strike, leading to panic among the new recruits.
Desperate, many women struggle to afford returns home and face monumental challenges in escaping their situations, compounding the crisis of human rights violations in the region.
