Anti-trafficking Organisations Research Articles

Art Therapy Exhibitions: Exploitation or Advocacy?

Promoting awareness of human trafficking by sharing trauma survivors' art and summaries of their life stories suggests ethical complexities that have been typically neglected by bioethicists. Although these survivors voluntarily share the objects they created during art therapy sessions, they are still at risk of harm, including further exploitation, due to their vulnerability, high rates of victim sensitivity, and the mental health consequences of their traumatic experiences. While some argue that the benefits of sublimation and art therapy for human trafficking survivors make sharing their art worth the risk, anti-trafficking organizations and supporters of such art exhibitions have responsibilities to be trauma informed.

The Role of Anti-trafficking Organizations in Human Trafficking Policy Implementation

ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag diskutiert Möglichkeiten zum Widerstand und zur Veränderung ausbeutender Arbeitsbedingungen sich bieten anhand der Rolle von Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NGOs) im Kampf gegen Menschenhandel. Dabei werden NGOs in postsowjetischen Staaten (Russland, Lettland und Ukraine) und ihre Strategien in der Implementation und Adaption internationaler Normen in nationales Recht analysiert. Den NGOs in diesen Staaten, die in hohem Maß von Menschenhandel betroffen sind, ist es gelungen durch das Zusammenwirken mit Internationalen Organisationen Veränderungen des rechtlichen Raums zu bewirken und das Thema Menschenhandel in das öffentliche Bewusstsein zu tragen.-----AbstractThe paper discusses possibilities of resistance and changes to exploitative working conditions in relation to the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) struggling against human trafficking. NGOs in post-soviet states (Russia, Latvia and Ukraine) and their strategies of implementation and adaption of international norms into national law are analyzed. NGOs in these states succeeded with alterations in legal regulations and contributed to public awareness of human trafficking by cooperation with international organizations.-----Bibliographie: Dean, Laura A.: The Role of Anti-trafficking Organizations in Human Trafficking Policy Implementation, Femina Politica, 1-2016, S. 79-92. https://doi.org/10.3224/feminapolitica.v25i1.23411

Understanding the complexities of responding to child sex trafficking in Thailand and Cambodia

Purpose – The market in trafficked children bought and sold for sexual exploitation is one of the most inhumane transnational crimes that appear to have been facilitated by globalisation and its many effects, such as growing disparity in wealth between North and South. Child sex trafficking (CST) in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is an extremely complex problem, deeply rooted in historical injustice, gender inequality and poverty. In addition to the complexities of the child trafficking issue, the organisations that seek to combat CST are themselves not always a united force and display their own internal and inter-agency complexities. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the key complexities of responding to CST in Thailand and Cambodia. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology for this research consisted of 22 semi-structured interviews with anti-child trafficking experts in Thailand and Cambodia, in addition to field observations in various child sex tourism hubs in Southeast Asia. Findings – The complexities of the CST problem in Thailand and Cambodia are discussed as well as analysis of the internal and inter-agency barriers faced by the organisations that seek to combat CST. The research finds that, due to limitations in donor funding, anti-trafficking organisations face difficulties in effectively responding to all aspects of the CST problem. The recommendation is made for improved advocacy networking against this transnational crime. Recent success stories are highlighted. Research limitations/implications – The research for this paper involved semi-structured interviews with staff from non-government organisations and United Nations agencies, but not with government representatives. The lack of available data from Thai and Cambodian government representatives limits the ability of the researcher to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-trafficking organisations’ response to the child trafficking issue. Also lacking is the voice of child trafficking victims, the key beneficiaries of anti-trafficking organisations’ aid and advocacy efforts. Originality/value – There is an abundance of literature on the subject of CST but a dearth in scholarly literature on the subject of advocacy and policy responses to CST in Southeast Asia. This paper provides a valuable contribution the knowledge base on child trafficking by analysing both the complexities of the CST issue and the complexities, for anti-trafficking organisations, of effectively combating CST in the GMS.

Rethinking Emancipation

This essay considers the rhetorical and discursive logics that underpin the history, philosophy and programme strategies of International Justice Mission (IJM), a US Christian non-profit organization that has pioneered the use of ‘raid and rescue’ (partnering with law enforcement to raid places of work) as a strategy for addressing trafficking in the Global South. Emancipation from bondage is the conceptual and moral imperative that undergirds IJM's mission, along with many other anti-trafficking organizations that, like IJM, imagine themselves as ‘new abolitionists’ fighting trafficking as a modern-day form of slavery. By drawing on commonly held assumptions about the nature of slavery and freedom, IJM offers a problematic vision of what the liberated subject of rescue should look like: a non-white woman who literally moves from darkness to light because she has been rescued by IJM. This vision of emancipation enables IJM to enact a particular set of strategies and programmes that are carceral and coercive (such as indefinite holding in government remand homes) in the name of saving victims of trafficking. By way of contrast, the essay examines the programming and mission of SANGRAM-VAMP, a non-profit advocacy organization and sex workers' union in Maharashtra, India. By analysing the various conflicts members of SANGRAM-VAMP have experienced with the IJM field office in Maharashtra, this essay concludes by describing a transformation of the ground on which anti-trafficking initiatives could potentially base the project of doing justice. In placing the radically different politics of SANGRAM-VAMP and IJM in tension, the essay asks whether a counter-discourse is possible by reimagining emancipation as a project that foregrounds collaborative processes of action that are decoupled from the action of a single emancipator.

The Lingha Boys of Siem Reap: A Baseline Study of Sexually-Exploited Young Men in Siem Reap, Cambodia

The sexual exploitation of women and girls in Southeast Asia continues to be the subject of much research and remains a central concern among NGOs and anti-trafficking organizations. As these concerns remain central, sexual violence against men and boys is often little understood or acknowledged. This study aims to provide a baseline of information of young men working in the male to male sex industry in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It serves to uncover some of the vulnerabilities of the young men working in this industry in order for NGOs and social service providers to understand them better. Structured interviews were conducted with 50 young men from numerous massage establishments within a 1-km radius of the Siem Reap town center. The vulnerabilities of these young men regarding a number of areas, including financial security, sexual history and health, violence, faith, and future plans, were assessed. This information was collected to determine the needs these young men may have and to provide initial data as a basis for understanding and future research. This study serves as one of the few attempts to understand the situation of young males in potentially sexually exploitative careers in Cambodia, and serves as a complement to a similar study conducted in Phnom Penh in 2011. This previous research focused exclusively on sexual exploitation within male to male massage parlors. The present study expands that sampling to males working in both male to male and mixed gender massage establishments (locations having both male and female masseurs catering to both male and female clients). This was done, in part, to provide a broader understanding of the situation of males working in potentially exploitative careers, as well as to provide a comparison of the potential vulnerabilities of men working in both types of establishments. A recent surge in nightclubs, gay bars, and internet chat rooms where young Cambodian men can be “picked up” for paid sex seems to indicate a surge in demand for male sexual service. The research team believes that the data in this study provide merely a glimpse of the “tip of the iceberg.” It is their hope that this data will serve to provide a clearer picture of the male sex industry and provoke numerous questions for future research.

Sex Trafficking or Sex Work? Conceptions of Trafficking Among Anti-Trafficking Organizations in Nepal

Trafficking for sexual purposes is widely recognized as a violation of human rights. Trafficking of women and girls within Nepal and from Nepal to India’s red light districts is thought to be extremely common. There is sharp debate within the anti-trafficking community, both within Nepal and globally, about why trafficking occurs and how to prevent it. I argue that this disagreement is rooted in two distinct underlying frameworks employed by anti-trafficking advocates to understand trafficking, which I identify as the “Prostitution Framework” and the “Labour Exploitation Framework.” This article introduces these frameworks and investigates where the anti-trafficking community in Nepal is situated. I find that this community is primarily rooted within the Prostitution Framework, and that this position has implications for how anti-trafficking programming is conducted. Recent changes in Nepal have begun to expose some of the shortcomings of this framework, and I conclude that there are strong reasons that anti-trafficking advocates in Nepal should examine their assumptions, as perhaps programmes situated within the Labour Framework may be more appropriate. More empirical research is required in order to demonstrate whether programming informed by the Labour Exploitation Framework would be more successful at preventing trafficking and limiting the harm that women experience in the sex industry.

‘The Perfect Business’: Human Trafficking and Lao–Thai Cross‐Border Migration

Over the past few years some governments and development organizations have increasingly articulated cross-border mobility as "trafficking in persons". The notion of a market where traffickers prey on the "supply" of migrants that flows across international borders to meet the "demand" for labour has become a central trope among anti-trafficking development organizations. This article problematizes such economism by drawing attention to the oscillating cross-border migration of Lao sex workers within a border zone between Laos and Thailand. It illuminates the incongruity between the recruitment of women into the sex industry along the Lao-Thai border and the market models that are employed by the anti-trafficking sector. It discusses the ways in which these cross-border markets are conceived in a context where aid programming is taking on an increasingly important role in the politics of borders. The author concludes that allusions to ideal forms of knowledge (in the guise of classic economic theory) and an emphasis on borders become necessary for anti-trafficking programmes in order to make their object of intervention legible as well as providing post-hoc rationalizations for their continuing operation.

Human Trafficking and Sexual Slavery: Australia’s Response

1.0 INTRODUCTION On 26 September 2001 Ms Puangthong Simaplee died in Vilkwood Detention Centre after being discovered by immigration officials during a raid on a Surry Hills brothel. She told the immigration officials that at a young age she had been sold into sexual servitude by her parents and trafficked from Thailand to Maylasia, then re-trafficked to Australia more recently as a young adult. After being discovered, Ms Simaplee was detained in Villawood Detention Centre as an unlawful non-citizen, weighing 38kg. Three days later, weighing only 31kg, she died as a result of heroin withdrawal.1 The inquest into the death of Ms Simaplee remains a particularly illustrative event that highlights the failure in the Australian legal system, and particularly the migration system, to deal effectively with the phenomenon of trafficking.2 Acknowledging the magnitude of the trafficking industry and the existence of Australia as a destination country for victims of many kinds of trafficking, this paper will focus on the scope and limitations of Australia's migration and criminal justice approaches to sex trafficking. The paper will outline the nature and extent of trafficking in Australia, current responses of the Australian government towards trafficking, the successes and failures of Australia's criminalisation approach, and the limitations of Australia's visa system for victims of trafficking in regard to international standards and human rights. Finally, the paper concludes with a number of recommendations that the government adopt a transparent, coordinated, monitored and holistic human rights and social justice approach to combat trafficking and slavery, developed in conjunction with human rights and non-government organisations, to ensure unconditional culturally-appropriate victim protection to prevent retrafficking and address wider systemic issues of globaUsation, poverty and gendered harms. 2.0 TRAFFICKING IN AUSTRALIA The United Nations 2002 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, ratified by Australia on 27 May 2004, defines human trafficking in Article 3 as: the recruitment, transportation, transfer, habouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, or fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power of a position of vulnerability or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purposes of exploitation. Divergent definitions of what constitutes sex trafficking have largely characterised policy debates on the issue and dictated responses to it. When the offences of slavery, sexual servitude and deceptive recruiting were introduced to the Australian Criminal Code Act in 1995, the Act required an element of bondage or coercion to establish a case of trafficking, a legal test that was arguably more onerous than international best practice by not accepting that trafficking could result from more insidious means such as fraud or abuse of power. The Act was also criticised for failing to address the experiences of vulnerable groups, the gendered nature of trafficking and reimposing border control.3 Despite amendments through the Criminal Code Amendment (Trafficking in Persons) Act 2005 that recognised factors such as threats, force, deception or debt bondage, feminist debates linger over the extent to which women can freely consent to sex work,4 and how such frameworks should be adopted into the definition of trafficking. Some anti-trafficking organisations view women's 'choice' as limited in the context of wider socioeconomic circumstances and argue that sex work victimises women and widens gender inequality: the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women argues, 'All prostitution exploits women, regardless of women's consent.'5 Other anti-trafficking organisations defend the right to self determination and expression and recognise women's agency in making informed decisions. …