Purity, Victimhood and Agency: Fifteen years of the UN Trafficking Protocol (original) (raw)
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Over the course of the new millennium human trafficking has evolved into a global phenomenon, attracting the attention of policy makers, academics, and the international community at large. Since state governments and feminists first began raising the alarm in the early 2000s, trafficking in human beings has received considerable media exposure, prompting widespread public condemnation. Yet the problem persists; indeed, if anything, it has continued to grow as economic globalization steadily erodes the social fabric of so many Third World and former Second World countries. This paper examines the phenomenon of human trafficking in the post-Cold War period with a view to identifying its causes and consequences and critiquing three remedial approaches: criminal, economic and feminist rights-based. In addition, the chief strategies currently used to combat human trafficking will be critiqued from the perspective of feminist, rights-based theory. Drawing on this discussion, some of the major obstacles to eradicating human trafficking will be examined, providing the basis for recommendations aimed at facilitating a feminist, rights-based approach to addressing human trafficking.
2004
This study aims to explore the right of trafficked victims of forced prostitution to remain in destination countries through the application of legal standards and victim protection mechanisms found at the national, regional and international level. The study also highlights the importance of State recognition that trafficked persons are victims of serious human rights abuses. Premised upon the principle that nondiscrimination is a fundamental human right, this paper argues that States need to take steps to safeguard the legal rights and protective needs of trafficking victims regardless of their immigration status or willingness to cooperate with law enforcement officials. The study further considers the feasibility of the position that trafficked persons should have the right to temporary residence and work permits, thereby serving the dual interests of both enabling trafficked persons to recover and rebuild their lives, and enabling the effective prosecution of traffickers by encouraging victims to report to the authorities and to act as witnesses. Also under examination is the thesis that trafficked persons should be given the opportunity to apply for permanent residence permit under national and international laws. According to this position, victims should be allowed to seek and receive asylum if their State of origin is unable or unwilling to offer protection, as provided by the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Finally, the paper aims to highlight the need to widely acknowledge (and not only in exceptional cases) that trafficking in women can be considered as gender-based persecution and that women victims of trafficking comprise a particular social group, one of the enumerated grounds of the 1951 Convention. We must work from the perspective of those who most need their human rights protected and promoted...By placing human rights at the centre of our analysis, we are forced to consider the needs of the trafficked person-and thereby to confront the poverty, inequality and discrimination which is at the root of the phenomenon..." 1
The International Journal of Human Rights, 2008
The response to the trafficking of women is primarily dominated by the discourse of criminal law both internationally and nationally. By contrast, in the refugee law context, women are constructed as victims in a 'culturally relative', patriarchal society. This paper explores the tensions between these constructs and the practical responses to protecting trafficked women. Taking Australia's policy response to the trafficking of women in the Asia-Pacific region as an example, the paper describes how the trafficking/smuggling distinction is blurred by constructing trafficked women both as victims/witnesses and as free agents rather than as rights bearing individuals. This profoundly affects the way that government agencies and decision-makers respond to the issues.
2021
The thesis studies the European anti-trafficking framework, comprehending relevant EU and Council of Europe instruments, and the narrative of trafficking that it creates. The aim of the thesis is to identify the assumptions and the imagery of trafficking upon which the framework is formed as well as the exclusions and blind spots that these assumptions create. The thesis analyses the legal framework by adopting a critical feminist methodology. It studies assumptions concerning gender and migration in the trafficking narrative by first focusing on a linkage between trafficking and prostitution policies, then on a linkage between trafficking and migration and finally on connections between trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence. Assumptions of what trafficking is are produced through linkages, and sometimes lacks of linkages, between these frameworks. The thesis argues that trafficking is assumed to involve organized criminal groups trafficking migrant women to the sex i...
Feminist Review, 2003
This short piece is a contribution to debates within feminism and beyond about trafficking in women. A charge that the research unit (Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, London Metropolitan University) I work in is now very familiar with, is that we fail to make distinctions between women who are 'forced' and those who are 'migrant sex workers'. Rather than explicitly defend our work and practice [i] , I want to use this opportunity to argue that this is the wrong debate to be having, if we are interested in making a difference in the lives of women and girls. This is for two reasons: firstly, that most definitions of trafficking are much wider than 'force'; and secondly because to focus on force alone plays into the hands of both traffickers and exploiters who will escape sanction except in the most extreme cases and those law enforcement officials who arrest, detain, prosecute and summarily deport women and girls detected in other countries.
Feminism and Sex Trafficking: Rethinking Some Aspects of Autonomy and Paternalism
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice An International Forum
This paper argues that potential cases of oppression, such as sex trafficking, can sometimes comprise autonomous choices by the trafficked individuals. This issue still divides radical from liberal feminists, with the former wanting to 'rescue' the 'victims' and the latter insisting that there might be good reasons for 'hiding from the rescuers.' This article presents new arguments for the liberal approach and raises two demands: first, help organizations should be run by affected women and be open-minded about whether or not the trafficked individuals should remain in the sex industry. Second, the career choices of trafficked individuals should be expanded by the introduction of an opportunity-extending right to asylum.