Anti-trafficking Laws Research Articles

Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law

Over the last fifteen years, the problem of human trafficking has become a focus of government and advocacy agendas worldwide. Increasingly referred to as “modern-day slavery,” the phenomenon has prompted rapid proliferation of international, regional, and national anti-trafficking laws, and inspired states to devote enormous financial and bureaucratic resources to its eradication. It has also spawned an industry of nonprofits that have elevated the “abolition” of trafficking into a pressing moral campaign, which anyone can join with the click of a mouse. Scholars have also jumped into the fray, calling on states to marshal human rights law, tax law, trade law, tort law, public health law, labor law, and even military might to combat this apparently growing international crime and human rights violation.

Women Trafficking In Pakistan: Gravity Of The Menace And Causes

The objective of this project paper is to gauge various factors underlying the internal and transnational trafficking of girls, women and children in Pakistan and to review the gravity and blueprint of the menace. Besides, this study endeavors to identify the most vulnerable section of the population in Pakistan in particular. This research work is primarily based on a review of secondary literature and interviews with the trafficking victims and the officials of the agencies engaged in prevention of human trafficking and the officials from certain NGOs working towards rehabilitation of the victims. Primary data was collected through interviews with the trafficking victims to get first hand information about their ordeals in order to secure an outlook into the dynamics of menace of domestic trafficking in Pakistan. For that purpose, 65 abused women were interviewed, majority of them lodged in the shelter houses in Karachi. Besides, this study also used periodic reports produced and published by various independent international bodies. Study concludes that poverty is the main underlying factor for this menace that leads to their economic and sexual abuse. Besides, gender disparity, abysmal literacy rate among the women in rural areas, and unawareness about legal privileges, lack of political and administrative will behind enforcement of anti-trafficking laws are also the contributing factors. Study found that these factors act in combination to bring about plight of the women in this region. Outcomes of this study have wide ranging practical implications including recommendations on identifying the factors that cause such trafficking and, accordingly, discovering the sections of society more vulnerable to internal and transnational trafficking. The study found that internally displaced people are usually more exposed to this menace. The study also highlighted internecine role of the law enforcement agencies especially the police.

Anti-Trafficking Law as a key to Global Economic Contradictions: A Response to Janie Chuang

Anti-trafficking law, with its rapid ascent to public visibility since the establishment of the Palermo Protocol fifteen years ago, offers a highly salient framework for understanding, and addressing, human exploitation. Yet this framework, as Professor Janie Chuang brilliantly illustrates in her article, Exploitation Creep and the Un-making of Human Trafficking Law,1 has proven both over-inclusive and, simultaneously and problematically, under-inclusive in its endeavors.The anti-trafficking framework is broad enough to have overlapped substantially with potentially competing legal and institutional regimes through the “exploitation creep” that Chuang identifies—regimes that ban, re-spectively, forced labor (“Creep 1”) and slavery (“Creep 2”). If brought to fruition, Chuang’s exposition suggests, the effect of anti-trafficking’s exploitation creep may be to marginalize the positive international law of forced labor and slavery treaties, and perhaps even to render them entirely superfluous.

Trafficking of Women and Children: Transgressions of Human Rights

Human rights are essential for civilized and dignified individual and social life. These are also essential for growth and sustenance of democratic system. Though human rights were not explicitly included in the original constitution, yet there were many provisions in it essentially aimed at ensuring certain basic human rights. Indian Constitution incorporates fundamental rights which extends to every citizen irrespective of his social or economic position or gender. These fundamental rights are in essence basic human rights enshrined in part third of constitution and these are justiciable. The establishment of National Human Rights Commission in 1993 to deal with human rights issues affirms this commitment. However, the immoral practice of trafficking of women and children in India is not only a grave violation of their human rights but also against the spirit of constitution which prohibits trafficking in human being. The problem of trafficking of women has to be analyzed in the context of social position of women in the patriarchal, semi feudal and caste ridden society of India. Article 23 prohibits trafficking in human being. Trafficking in human beings means buying and selling men and women like goods. Parliament has passed “Suppression of immoral traffic in women and children 1956” for punishing acts which result in traffic in human beings. However, this immoral practice continues unabated despite these statutory provisions. Women and children are forced into this industry due to poverty, violence, economic compulsions and financial enslavement. The women and children of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and those from poverty stricken regions are more vulnerable to this inhuman act. An estimated 378 districts are affected by trafficking of women and children. Taking advantage of their pitiable social conditions, the traffickers lure them with promise of employment in big cities and trap them in their network. Most of these women and children are either employed as domestic workers and subjected to inhuman treatment or forced into dehumanizing profession of prostitution. India is estimated to have prostitution network of over 10 million, most of them are trafficked. The declining sex ratio in some states has opened a new immoral business of purchasing wives for unmarried youths in women-deficit States from Eastern or North Eastern states. These purchased wives are respected neither by society nor by family members including their husband. The paper concludes by laying stress on social vigilance including the active role of NGOs, gender sensitization of police, effective implementation of anti-trafficking laws, judicial reforms and proper rehabilitation policy is essential to eradicate this social evil.

Trapped at Sea. Using the Legal and Regulatory Framework to Prevent and Combat the Trafficking of Seafarers and Fishers.

The breadth and diversity of trafficking for forced labour has become increasingly recognised over the past several years, including heightened attention to human trafficking within the seafaring and commercial fishing industries. Not only are these sectors where trafficking abuse can and does take place, but there are also aspects of these sectors that may lend themselves particularly to human trafficking abuses due to the nature of this form of trafficking as well as the legal and regulatory framework in place. The article begins by framing what constitutes trafficking at sea, both in the commercial fishing sector and in the merchant fleet and then presents the legal and regulatory framework to combat trafficking at sea – namely, international anti-trafficking law, international maritime law and the international law of the sea. The article then considers the “three P paradigm” of anti-trafficking (that is, prevention, protection and prosecution) and how improved policies, regulation and legislation (and, as importantly, enforcement) in these areas have the potential to contribute to an improved situation for seafarers and fishers—to both prevent and combat trafficking in commercial fishing and the merchant fleet, while also noting differences between the two sectors. The analysis also draws on the perspective and experiences of men trafficked in the seafaring and commercial fishing sectors to firmly situate the discussion in the practical realm and articulate what, in concrete terms, can be done to effectively prevent and combat trafficking of seafarers and fishers.

Sex work and HIV in Cambodia: trajectories of risk and disease in two cohorts of high-risk young women in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

ObjectivesHIV prevalence among Cambodian female sex workers (FSW) is among the highest in Southeast Asia. We describe HIV prevalence and associated risk exposures in FSW sampled serially in Phnom Penh,...

“Things that Involve Sex are Just Different”: US Anti-Trafficking Law and Policy on the Books, in Their Minds, and in Action

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, passed by the US Congress in 2000, criminalizes the forced or deceptive movement of people into exploitative conditions of labor and provides services to victims. The law makes a symbolic distinction (although it holds no legal meaning) between “sex” and “non-sex” trafficking, (i.e., movement into forced prostitution and movement into other forced labor sectors), thereby marking “sex trafficking” as a special category. This article explores how the law is translated into action through symbolically-mediated processes that incorporate assumptions and narratives about sex, gender, and victimization, as well as how the symbolic privileging of “sex trafficking” results in uneven treatment of victims.

Do Feminists Need an Economic Sociology of Law?

Feminist legal scholars have long exposed the mutually constitutive relationship between the market and the social sphere, particularly, of the family, as mediated by the state. A peculiar division of labour has emerged in American feminist legal theorizing on the market in the context of care work, on the one hand, and sex work on the other. Care is valorized, thus entrenching the family‐market dichotomy while the sex‐work debates view the market as a source of harm and violence and therefore to be eliminated from the social. This produces a problematic feminist understanding of the market and generates legal reforms that produce unintended consequences for women themselves. The article offers an economic sociology of law pursued in legal ethnographic terms as a way of revitalizing contemporary feminist legal thought on the market and, indeed, the economy, illustrating its use in the context of international anti‐trafficking law and transnational surrogacy.

Human Trafficking and Moral Panic in Cambodia: The Unintended Consequences of Good Intentions

Cambodia was one of the first countries to enact an anti-trafficking law in 1996. This was one of the harshest laws in the country and punished trafficking as severely as premeditated murder. Although there was some concern about human trafficking (HT) within Cambodia, a global campaign led by the United States, was waging a “war on human trafficking” which required action by the passage of the anti-HT law to ensure the continuation of development aid. This paper critically assesses the impact of the new law and interviewed prisoners, police, court officials and other actors involved in anti-trafficking work in Cambodia. The law effectively criminalised commercial sex work and become a source of rent-seeking for police and justice officials, in a dysfunctional criminal justice system. Most of those caught by the new law come from among the poorest of Cambodians. Little evidence for the role of organised crime and high profits from the HT business was found. The study illustrates the unintended consequences of the moral campaigns against HT and prostitution in Cambodia.A key aspect was a sample of 91 convicted ‘traffickers’ held in Cambodian prisons who were interviewed about their role in human trafficking (HT). This sample represented 45.7% of all incarcerated traffickers then held in the eight prisons covered by the study. The majority were Cambodian (81.3%) and the others Vietnamese or Thai. Their age ranged from 16 to 64 years, with a mean age of 38.5 years. Two male offenders had been under the age of 16 at arrest. On average female traffickers were significantly older than male (37.7 years and 32.3 years respectively). Most of the participants had very limited education: nearly one-third (30.8%) were Khmer illiterate (with a similar proportion of males and females). Even when they did attend school, women had significantly fewer years of education than men. Even by Cambodian standards, 80% were “poor” or “very poor,” and 20% just above the poverty line. The majority of the prisoners had been charged with or convicted of human trafficking (69.2%), but there were differences in the offending patterns of male and female inmates. Over 87% of the women had been charged/convicted of human trafficking compared to only 47.7% of the men. On the other hand, a larger proportion of men (26.1%) than women (4.1%) had been charged/convicted of procuring for prostitution. Of the 91 incarcerated participants, 83 had been convicted and eight were in remand. A large majority of the 83 convicted individuals (n=70, 84.3%) had been convicted of human trafficking or abduction, or for being an accomplice in such cases, and 13 were in prison for procuring for prostitution.

Vulnerability in Domestic Discourses on Trafficking: Lessons from the Indian Experience

In recent years, rather than addressing the needs of sex workers themselves or of trafficked persons, international anti-trafficking law has been mobilised towards an ideological end, namely the abolition of sex work. The vulnerability of ‘third world’ female sex workers in particular has provided a potent image for justifying state intervention backed by the full force of the criminal law. Moral legitimacy has been afforded to this by a radical feminist discourse which views sex workers as nothing but hapless victims. Drawing on the work of Martha Fineman and legal realists like Robert Hale, this article redeploys vulnerability in trafficking debates to depart from its narrative of victimhood and to offer a renewed critique of liberal legalism, which has in the trafficking context been characterised by legal strategies of criminalisation and the attendant rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked persons. Specifically, it examines how three Indian social legislations regulating bonded labour, contract labour and inter-state migrant labour, and targeted at the domestic trafficking of men, conceptualise vulnerability in substantially different ways when compared to the 2000 Palermo Protocol on Trafficking (at least as it has been enforced to date). To the extent that these Indian laws construe the vulnerability of labour as systemic, trafficking is understood as a problem of labour migration to be addressed primarily by labour law. As such, this view of vulnerability, I argue, not only helps to de-exceptionalise trafficking as always equivalent to the trafficking of women for sex work, and therefore sex work, but also to substantively address the vulnerability of both male and female workers in other labour markets.

Criminal Law against Human Trafficking within the EU: A Comparison of an Approximated Legislation?

The article compares criminal legislations against trafficking in human beings (THB) in various member states of the European Union. It discusses evolution of anti-trafficking laws internationally and in EU, impact of these laws on preventing THB. It has been informed that THB is a transnational organised crime involving recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person for exploiting them within the sex industry and labor market or through other slavery-like practices. Keywords: Human trafficking Language: en

Is ‘child placement’ trafficking?: Questioning the validity of an accepted discourse (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Within the discursive‐institutional space occupied by organisations working on child protection, child trafficking is often assumed to represent a direct outgrowth of the socio‐cultural custom of ‘child placement’, whereby parents send their children to live (and work) within other households. In Benin, where research for this paper was conducted, the narrative of ‘placement corrupted’ has become so well established that the country's anti‐trafficking law is in fact a law regulating the movement (including placement) of minors, and has in practice resulted in a de facto criminalisation of the intra‐familial mobility that has long formed a normal component of child‐rearing and socialisation within the region. In this paper, I offer a brief overview of this situation, and attempt to question the validity of the discourse on which the anti‐placement law and its attendant policies are based. I will employ the Foucauldian techniques of discursive archaeology and genealogy to unravel the origins of the discourse, and will draw on my own and related empirical research to problematize its conclusions.

Cross-border sex trade, transnational remittances and changing family structures among Benin people of southern Nigeria

The paper examined Benin women who migrate for the purpose of cross border sexual transactions. It also assessed the changes in the traditional Benin family structure, mediated by the prevalence of Benin women migrants and their financial contributions to their families. The study relied on qualitative data generated through Household-based Interviews; Key Informant Interviews, Vignette-based Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and Life Histories. A total of 18 vignette-based FGDs were held among adult males, adult females and youths (using –a story of sex-trafficking that ended on “successful” note and a tragic story of a sex-trafficked victim). Also, five (5) Key Informants who were selected on the basis of their social statuses in the Benin Society were interviewed. Findings showed that the traditional Benin family structure, prior to women migration for the purpose of sexual transaction, which was organized on the basis of age and sex, is fast eroding. Many of these women who have been successful in trans-border sexual transaction, despite their sex or age in the family, are now the centre of authority and pivot of important family decisions. This is as a result of the huge sum of money they remit to their families. Furthermore, findings from showed that Benin women who are direct beneficiaries of transnational remittances from their daughters‟ sexual transaction overseas, can now access critical resources which were previously inaccessible due to the traditional inheritance systemrule of primogeniture. Consequently, most of these women in this category have become the shadow bread winners in their families by providing for the daily upkeep of family members. Also, many of such women have erected edifices for themselves, parents or husbands, while others have provided adequate financial resources for their family members to open up businesses. The study concludes that based on the pervasive notion of the utility of transnational remittances obtained from sex trafficking in aiding family economic advancement in the region, stemming the tide by making anti trafficking laws will at best reduce the incidence for a while but cannot curtail the trend. This has an implication of compromising the integrity of the contemporary Benin family, as a socialization agency for its members.

Crime, Corruption and Chaos

During the late 1990s, two simultaneous conversations occurred on Capitol Hill. One focused on a proposed US anti-trafficking law, the other on the apparent failure of US assistance policies in the former Soviet Union. It is the synchrony of these two political conversations that operates as the catalyst for my work here. I ask: Why did US legislators' commitment in the late 1990s to halt human trafficking coincide with clashes over the apparent failure of US Russia policy? Through close textual analyses of a series of Congressional hearings on both issues, I argue that these two simultaneous conversations were co-constitutive and, consequently, reveal much about the gendered dynamics governing the review, creation and implementation of US Russia policy at the end of the first post-Soviet decade.

Screening Sexual Slavery? Southeast Asian Gonzo Porn and US Anti-Trafficking Law

Do videotaped scenes of Southeast Asian prostitutes intimately engaging western sex tourists provide evidence of victimization by sex trafficking? Scenes presented in popular ‘gonzo’ or professional—amateur pornography of Southeast Asian sex tourism tell a more complex story that requires a critical visual reading practice not only of prostitution but of pornography and slavery. Looking at the particular case of the sexual imaging of Asian women, I show how we need to develop ways of critical reading that do not simply diagnose pornography as racism, prostitution as victimization, or sex as slavery, but as complex scenes of power, agency, and difference. I illustrate the historical use of Asian women’s images to establish how sexuality is tied to racial sexual difference and interrogate scenes of gonzo porn in which the prostitutes engage the camera. I argue that by employing ‘intimate literacy’, we can attend to what the prostitute might be saying through pornography.

From the Inside Out: Reforming State and Local Prostitution Enforcement to More Effectively Combat Sex Trafficking in the U.S. And Abroad

Over the past eight years, federal and state governments have passed anti-trafficking laws and spent millions of dollars to combat sex trafficking in the U.S. and abroad. However, as evidenced by the minimal number of convictions and the unremitting incidence of domestic and international trafficking, these policies have yet to achieve proportionate results. This Note argues that without a significant paradigm shift in state and local prostitution enforcement, national and international counter-trafficking goals will continue to go unrealized. The dominant prostitution enforcement model poses serious obstacles to anti-trafficking policies. By arresting and prosecuting all persons in prostitution without providing a defense for trafficking victims, state-level enforcement practices frustrate federal victim protection mandates. At the same time, by failing to investigate and prosecute traffickers, pimps and purchasers, state enforcement practices undermine federal objectives of deterring traffickers and reducing the market that fuels trafficking. Prostitution has been largely discounted as a local, trivial, or otherwise inappropriate matter for federal intervention. But, only by educating the public and taking the lead to redirect prostitution enforcement towards pimps and purchasers will the U.S. Government be able to effectively reduce prostitution and sex trafficking.

Beyond Corruption: An Assessment of Russian Law Enforcement’s Fight Against Human Trafficking

Over the past two decades, human trafficking has become an increasingly serious problem for Russia. Because it has been framed as a manifestation of transnational organized crime, law enforcement has the primary role in making sure that traffickers are found and punished. Russian law enforcement’s perceived failure to effectively prosecute traffickers is often blamed on corruption and their efforts have been criticized by domestic and foreign actors alike. This article explores human trafficking in the context of the criminal justice system as a whole, examining the incentives and disincentives that Russian law enforcement agencies have for enforcing anti-trafficking laws. Analysis reveals that poor performance is not due solely to corruption or disinterest in human trafficking. Structural impediments combined with problems specific to the anti-trafficking law have made it more likely that they will use other parts of the Criminal Code to prosecute traffickers instead of the laws specific to trafficking.

Analisis RUU Anti Trafficking di Indonesia

Trafficking was initially associated with prostitution but, infact, it includes some other exploitations and slavery. Human trafficking keeps growing and its farm and complexity are changing from time to time_the only persistent thing is its characteristic of human exploitation. It is illegal activity and is against human rights: it is against the rights of its victims, which include women, children and worker. Trafficking is vulnerable to the emergence of violence against human beings, unwanted pregnancy, and sexually transmitted (STD) and infectious diseases. The networks of trafficking are currently well organized and, therefore, it demands a more serious and global attention to deal with the issue. Each country, including Indonesia, has to rethink about its system of law to be able to prosecute the traffickers and help the victims, both materially and immaterially. Some countries have ratified and implemented the anti-trafficking law. In Indonesia, however, the law is presently neither ratified nor implemented yet. The government of Indonesia, nonetheless, proclaimed the national action plan for the elimination of trafficking in women and children and made RUU (draft of laws) on anti, trafficking. So many women and children in Indonesia are waiting for the law that liberates them from any violence or exploitation and enables them to enjoy freedom of life. This draft, therefore, has to be immediately ratified.

Human rights or wrongs? The struggle for a rights-based response to trafficking in human beings

A unique opportunity for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and advocates to contribute to the development of a human rights-based response to the trafficking of human beings now exists. Many governments have signed a new international treaty on trafficking and are in the process of adopting domestic anti-trafficking laws. However, as explained in this article, most government officials are uninformed about the causes and consequences of trafficking, and the appropriate rights-based legal responses. NGOs can bring their expertise and a human rights framework to the debate by working with government officials to draft and implement new trafficking laws and policies. This article offers a brief introduction and guidance to some of the challenges that NGOs will face in their advocacy work