Anti-Trafficking Review
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Debate - The Trafficking Protocol has Advanced the Global Movement against Human Exploitation: The case of the United Kingdom
No full textWhen politicians, responding to public campaigns focused on human trafficking, make bold and over-emotive statements, invoking William Wilberforce and the pressing need to lead the global fight against slavery, the Trafficking Protocol,[1] proves its worth. Insulated from national political rhetoric, international treaties, be it the Trafficking Protocol or regional instruments, provide an invaluable structure for governments’ national legislative responses to human trafficking. As the United Kingdom’s (UK) Solicitor General noted,[2]The UK’s legal framework has been directly influencedby UN [United Nations] and EU [European Union] Conventions and Directives (emphasis added) … [and] The ‘Palermo Protocol’ continues to shape the UK’s response to human trafficking and in particular the care and support afforded to identified human trafficking victims.[1] In full: Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.[2] Speech, Solicitor General, Oliver Heald QC MP, ‘Prosecuting human trafficking and slavery: The law and the UK response’, UK Government, 12 October 2012, retrieved 6 January 2015 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prosecuting-human-trafficking-and-slavery-the-law-and-the-uk-respons
Interview - Human Trafficking in Brazil: Between crime-based and human rights-based governance
No full textThis interview with Ela Wiecko V. de Castilho, Vice-Prosecutor General of the Republic in Brazil, looks at the development of anti-trafficking law and agendas since Brazil’s ratification of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol). Castilho looks at how the externally-imposed concept of anti-trafficking gained momentum in the country and details debates and tensions in the subsequent development of national policy. Brazilian criminal law has significant conceptual differences with the Trafficking Protocol, particularly around consent and internal trafficking. Castilho discusses unresolved issues on rights of sex workers and migrants and points to a data collection methodology that was recently established and will allow for analysis of whether victims’ situations meet the international definition of human trafficking. If they do not, she suggests that this definition may not need to be maintained in Brazil
Trade Unions, Forced Labour and Human Trafficking
Get PDFThis article examines the dilemmas facing trade unions seeking to engage on questions of forced labour and human trafficking. The International Labour Organization and elements of the international trade union movement have succeeded in getting forced labour on the policy agenda globally and within many national settings. However, trade unions have limited capacity to effect real change in relation to these issues because of limitations on their influence, determined largely by membership density and the limited number of sectors in which they are present, but also internal assessments of what constitutes ‘core business’. As a consequence, while trade unions may advocate for legislative or policy change, partner with non-governmental organisations to deal with particular cases, or even engage directly with vulnerable populations, the integration of those populations into the day to day concerns of trade unions necessarily remains elusive—particularly in the global south, where forced labour is most prevalent.
Debate: The Challenges and Perils of Reframing Trafficking as ‘Modern-Day Slavery’
No full textIn the last five years, we have seen a rebranding of global anti-trafficking efforts as ‘modern-day slavery’ abolitionism. The United States of America (US) Department of State and powerful philanthropists are key proponents of the slavery makeover, prompting other governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations alike to adopt the ‘modern-day slavery’ frame. The slavery frame has helped ignite outrage and galvanise political support for modern anti-slavery campaigns. It has also helped expand the anti-trafficking spotlight beyond the sex sector to expose the extreme exploitation that men, women, and children suffer in the non-sexual labour sectors of our global economy. These benefits come at a cost, however, both with respect to legal doctrine and practice, and, perhaps more significantly, to how we understand and respond to the problem of extreme exploitation for profit
Editorial: How is the money to combat human trafficking spent?
Get PDFThis Issue—Following the Money: Spending on anti-traffickingThis edition of the Anti-Trafficking Review explores what happens to the money that is allocated by governments and private donors to stop human trafficking and to assist people who have been trafficked.It has been an honour to play the role of guest editor, though it has not been easy to steer a route between amazement (at the sums apparently involved), concern (at the lack of real insight into how money is allocated and spent) and cynicism (at what appear to be rather modest achievements).It was challenging for potential authors to choose a method of analysing anti-trafficking spending. Should they simply describe what money is available and the drawbacks of the ways which donors make it available to organisations to use? Some authors take this descriptive approach. Should articles be about the efficiency and effectiveness of aid flows in general, in which case the shortcomings in anti-trafficking funding may mirror the generic flaws in aid flows? Only one author (Ucnikova) has tackled this. Or, should studies focus on the way the purse strings are controlled by a small number of donors who appear poorly informed about the needs of trafficked persons or the factors that cause them to be trafficked? Several of the articles touch on this (e.g. those of Hoff and Nwogu).Early on, it became apparent to the editorial team that people working for large organisations with anti-trafficking programmes were wary of contributing articles on this topic. In this sense, although the Anti-Trafficking Review aims to promote public debate, we have not yet found the best way of opening up a debate about funding, for practitioners evidently fear that writing about their own sources of funding could result in the tap being turned off! So, it is mainly the Debate section that tackles the question of funding strategies. Even these contributions do not make assessments of the various actors involved (donors and the organisations they fund) in as full and frank a way as is needed.The articles in this edition represent a start on the topic of anti-trafficking funding, but a great deal remains to be explored
Do Evidence-Based Approaches Alienate Canadian Anti-Trafficking Funders?
Get PDFAs a sex worker support organisation, SWAN (Supporting Women’s Alternatives Network) Vancouver’s relationship to anti-trafficking funding remains ambivalent, particularly given the history of anti-trafficking measures that have jeopardised the rights of sex workers. In this article, we share how we, as a small grassroots group, attempt to work through these ambivalences in dialogue with donors. Although SWAN Vancouver works with women who are often perceived to be trafficked (i.e. Asian women in sex work), it is rare for members of SWAN Vancouver to come across any case in the sex-work sector that has the hallmarks of trafficking, such as coerced work. Instead, our anti-trafficking work has mainly involved identifying the harms and human rights violations caused by repressive or misguided anti-trafficking measures. We reflect on our dialogue with two Canadian funders (a federal government agency and a national public foundation) that have considerable resources and immense power to influence what anti-trafficking practices are implemented in Canada. We analyse how these two funders and their adoption of an anti-prostitution analysis of trafficking will likely result in punitive consequences for immigrant sex workers, and therefore increase the need to assist women who have been anti-trafficked rather than trafficked.¿Están los financiadores canadienses contra la trata alejados del enfoque basado en la evidencia?ResumenComo una organización que apoya a los trabajadores sexuales, la relación entre SWAN (Red Alternativa de Apoyo a las Mujeres) y los financiadores contra la trata en Vancouver es contradictoria, sobre todo teniendo en cuenta la historia de las medidas contra la trata que han puesto en peligro los derechos de los trabajadores sexuales. En este artículo discutimos cómo nosotros, como un pequeño pero clave grupo especializado, nos esforzamos en trabajar contra estas contradicciones en un diálogo continuo con los donantes. Aunque SWAN Vancouver trabaja con mujeres que a veces son percibidas como objeto de la trata (como por ejemplo las trabajadoras sexuales asiáticas), para los miembros de SWAN Vancouver es difícil identificar cualquier caso en el sector del trabajo sexual con las señas de identidad de la trata de personas, como trabajo coaccionado. Por el contrario, nuestro trabajo contra la trata principalmente está relacionado con la identificación del daño y las violaciones a los derechos humanos causados por las medidas represivas o erróneamente identificadas como contra la trata. En este trabajo reflexionamos sobre el diálogo con dos financiadores canadienses (una agencia gubernamental federal y una fundación pública nacional), que tienen considerables recursos y un inmenso poder para influir en las medidas contra la trata que son implementadas en Canadá. Analizamos cómo estos dos financiadores y su particular aproximación al problema de la trata desde un análisis contra la prostitución, derivarán en una serie de consecuencias punitivas para los trabajadores sexuales migrantes, fomentando la necesidad de asistir a mujeres que más allá de haber sido objeto de la trata, han sido objeto de las medidas contra la trata
Debate: Prevention and Victim Compensation
Get PDFAfroza, a Bangladeshi woman who worked for sixteen years without getting paid and was not allowed to go home to visit her family. Keni, an Indonesian woman whose employers injured her with a hot iron, leaving disfiguring third-degree burns all over her body. Kartika, an older Sri Lankan woman whose employers made her work around the clock without pay, shaved her head to humiliate her and gouged pieces of flesh out of her arm with knives.These are some of the women whose faces and stories still haunt me after ten years of investigating human rights abuses against migrant domestic workers in Asia and the Middle East
Debate: What Would be the Best Way to Use 10 Million Dollars in the Counter-Trafficking Sector?
Get PDFFor me, it is essential that the first question related to this query be: ‘What are we really hoping to achieve with our available resources?’ In the past, this question would have been answered in terms of the deployment of the traditional ‘3 Ps’: prevention interventions, prosecution efforts and protection initiatives. Programme efforts under these headings are often designed to prevent people from being trafficked, put criminals in jail and help victims after they leave the exploitative environment. But few interventions explicitly state ‘the goal is to reduce the number of people in human trafficking/slavery-like conditions’. The goal must be the reduction of overall victims.The second question I would ask: ‘What can be done to achieve the most impact in reducing the number of trafficked persons, with the least amount of resources?’ In other words, I would seek to put in place a programme that is both cost effective and impactful. With limited funding available globally, every dollar must count
Anti-Trafficking Interventions in Nigeria and the Principal-Agent Aid Model
Get PDFFollowing the rising profile of trafficking in persons globally and Nigeria’s position as a critical country in the African region, significant—though insufficient and poorly spent—funding has been deployed towards tackling the problem. This funding, however, is provided in a ‘principal-agent’ relationship by donors to the government of Nigeria and anti-trafficking organisations. Donors (the principals) fund organisations (the agents) to do work they deem important, though organisations tend to have significantly different needs and preferences for the funding. The consequence is that interventions paid for by these funds are ‘not fit for purpose’, making their outcomes often invisible, undesirable or unsustainable. An ancillary and critical issue related to anti-trafficking funding in Nigeria is accountability, or rather a lack of accountability. Where key actors in addressing trafficking are not accountable to beneficiaries, they miss out on critical feedback to help them improve services or design appropriate interventions.Intervenciones contra la trata en Nigeria y el Modelo de Ayuda Agente-PrincipalResumenSiguiendo el creciente perfil internacional de la trata de personas a nivel global, así como la posición de Nigeria como un país fundamental en la región de África, son significativos -aunque insuficientes y débilmente utilizados- los esfuerzos de financiación que se han desplegado para afrontar el problema. Esta financiación sigue una relación de principal-agente entre los donantes que financian al gobierno de Nigeria y las organizaciones contra la trata. Los donantes (los principales) financian organizaciones (los agentes) para hacer el trabajo que ellos consideran que es importante, a través de organizaciones que contemplan necesidades y preferencias de financiación significativamente diferentes. Como consecuencia, las intervenciones financiadas por estos financiadores están diseñadas "sin encajar en las necesidades", haciendo que sus resultados con frecuencia sean invisibles, indeseables o no sostenibles en el tiempo. Una cuestión secundaria, pero sin embargo fundamental, relacionada con la financiación contra la trata en Nigeria es la rendición de cuentas o, mejor dicho, la falta de rendición de cuentas. Cuando los actores principales en la lucha contra la trata no tienen que rendir cuentas frente a los beneficiarios, se pierde la capacidad de aprender de los éxitos y fracasos de las actividades ya implementadas, lo que ayudaría a mejorar los servicios o diseñar intervenciones adecuadas
Debate: Strategically Working in Parallel to Traffickers
Get PDFLet’s be realistic, counter-trafficking teams will never be as effective as the proactive and flexible networks of outlaws that violate the rights of millions of people each year. The ‘bad guys’ operate without the same financial limitations such as bureaucratic red tape and donor criteria, and take advantage of patchy and often uncoordinated border surveillance that is chronically untrained in detecting trafficking in persons. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in the fight against human trafficking—and in direct contact with presumed victims (their status is not assessed until at a stage later than this initial contact)—are in a diametrically opposite situation. They must carefully abide by the national and international legal frameworks that their criminal antagonists ignore. Donors and national authorities operate within the constraints of geographic target areas and funding cycles. Since counter-trafficking actors neither create the markets nor devise the routes for trafficking, their strategic cross-border (or long distance) partnerships are always a few steps behind the traffickers, if not many steps behind, and rarely efficient