Abstract
The definition of human trafficking as set in the Trafficking Protocol (also known as the Palermo Protocol) functionally centres most of the response to the phenomenon in the criminal justice system. This occludes many of the sociopolitical determinants of vulnerability that leads to trafficking. It also discourages any real debate about the various forms of oppression and even structural violence that act as catalysts to the human trafficking market. The Trafficking Protocol, and a vast number of international organisations, non-governmental organisations and governments, focuses on statistics of prosecution rates, arrests, victim typology and organised crime. I use the example of bride trafficking along the Sino-Burmese border to illustrate the complications and, in certain instances, harm that befall an anti-trafficking regime that does not use a wider lens of migration, agency, development and gender equality to address the factors leading to exploitation.
Highlights
Within the past two decades, the densely populated region of Yunnan province, China and mainland Southeast Asia has been characterised as a major ‘hot spot’ for human trafficking. 2 In 2000, the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol) created an international standard for governments to pass national legislation on human trafficking and set the parametres of how acts considered the crime of human trafficking constitute a global crime
I use the example of bride trafficking along the Sino-Burmese border to illustrate the complications and, in certain instances, harm that befall an antitrafficking regime that does not use a wider lens of migration, agency, development and gender equality to address the factors leading to exploitation
Thailand and Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) developed national legislation along with bilateral Memorandums of Understanding aimed at combating different forms of cross-border human trafficking
Summary
Within the past two decades, the densely populated region of Yunnan province, China and mainland Southeast Asia (commonly referred to as the Mekong River Region) has been characterised as a major ‘hot spot’ for human trafficking. 2 In 2000, the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol) created an international standard for governments to pass national legislation on human trafficking and set the parametres of how acts considered the crime of human trafficking constitute a global crime. Though the Trafficking Protocol does not explicitly mention forced marriage or bride trafficking in its definition of human trafficking, the term ‘slavery-like practices’ incorporates the many forms of domestic or gendered exploitation that the drafters intended to constitute as human trafficking.[4] Scholars and activists are eager to identify, classify and target forced marriage as bride trafficking in Asia Governments such as those in China and Burma are being pressured to increase the prosecution rates of bride trafficking offenses and maintain positive reputations abroad, especially under the influence of the United States Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report. This process reflects many of the values of the international institutions and treatises, but these global, one-size-fits-all responses do not always serve the people they are meant to help
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