Victimisation, Citizenship and Gender: Interrogating State Responses

Abstract

For over two decades human trafficking has been a high priority on the international agenda, attracting significant investment in legal and policy infrastructure across the globe (Lee 2011; Segrave 2013). This continues apace. As a consequence of such interest, a counter-trafficking industry has emerged — one stretching from the international to the local context that relies predominantly upon the traditional criminological configuration of crime: featuring victims (innocent women and children, most often) and offenders (traffickers) and the need for intervention in the form of rescue and justice for victims (most often conducted by the state via the criminal justice system). Such linear, black-and-white responses to trafficking are embedded in the three-Ps approach (prevention, protection and prosecution) that recently grew into the four-Ps approach (with the addition of partnerships), which is upheld by the United States as the ‘fundamental framework’ to address the problem of human trafficking globally (United States Department of State [hereinafter USDOS] 2014). Key national and international counter-trafficking instruments, such as US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report, the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, the UN Model Law against Trafficking in Persons, and others further reiterate ‘best practice’ in addressing trafficking as a ‘law and order’ one, erected on ‘ideal victim’ and ‘ideal offender’ stereotypes (Christie 1986; see also Milivojevic and Pickering 2013; Segrave et al. 2009).