Women migrant workers and counter-trafficking responses in Association of Southeast Asian Nations: The enduring challenge of safety and security

Drawing on a study undertaken across eight Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries in 2019, this article focuses on the persistence of investment in criminal justice infrastructure and mechanisms 20 years after the Palermo Protocol came into effect. We examine the enduring challenges and limitations around counter trafficking responses that remain removed from the lived realities of women migrant workers. Building on qualitative interviews with stakeholders and women migrant workers, we argue that women's protection from migration and labor exploitation and gendered violence remains elusive. This study highlights how counter-trafficking systems undermine women's safety and argues for a move away from siloed trafficking efforts, toward a much broader commitment to upholding women migrant workers’ rights and protection.

Sub-Saharan women trafficked for sexual exploitation: A transdisciplinary approach from the paradigm of resilience

Introduction. Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is a growing social problem in today’s democratic societies, affecting mainly girls and women (Eurostat, 2018). It is also a crime (Palermo protocol [UN, 2000]), a violation of human rights, and a manifestation of gender-based violence (UN’s Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women [UN, 1993]), and a type of slavery (Correa, 2011) against the most impoverished women. Purpose. In this article, we focus on the sub-Saharan trafficked women who come to southern Europe via the human trafficking routes that cross northern Africa going through places such as Lagos, Tinzaouaten (Mali), Tamanrrasset (Argelia), the Sahara Desert, and different Moroccan cities, before reaching Europe over the Southern Spanish coastline. Ew show the resources used by these women when going through the said contexts of exploitation and forced prostitution. Methodology. Our research reviews the existing literature taking resilience as a pivotal point that is present in various areas of knowledge, including psychology and literature, among others. It allows us to show a change of perspective in this matter, by making these women visible in terms of their capacities. Results. We show examples, from different fields of knowledge and disciplines, of women who, having lived in these contexts, have carried out processes of fortitude, recovery, and personal growth. A new glimpse of this phenomenon and of these processes is studied, from a scarcely researched perspective to this day. Contribution. The originality of this analysis contributes a new understanding of the capacity of resilience of this population, despite the adverse conditions of their migratory experience

International Law and Regional Norm Smuggling: How the EU and ASEAN Redefined the Global Regime on Human Trafficking

The European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have developed fundamentally different regional regimes to address human trafficking despite both drawing on the framework established by the U.N. Palermo Protocol. These regimes have been deployed to achieve different missions: crime control animates the European framework whereas migration management informs the ASEAN regime. These different regional agendas have led to all central elements of the respective antitrafficking regimes being addressed differently including, the legal authority of the regional regime over domestic legislation, the allocation of responsibility between “sending” and “receiving” countries, their approaches to subjects of human trafficking, and the connectedness of each antitrafficking instrument to the wider regional regimes. The two regional responses challenge general assumptions about the universality and coherence of the growing international legal framework on human trafficking.

The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse

Abstract20 years since the negotiation of the Palermo Protocol on Trafficking in 2000, the anti-trafficking field has gone from an early, almost exclusive preoccupation with sex work to addressing extreme exploitation in a range of labour sectors. While this might suggest a reduced focus on the nature of the work performed and a greater focus on the conditions under which it is performed, in reality, anti-trafficking discourse remains in the grip of polarised positions on sex work even as the carceral effects of anti-trafficking law become evident and the Swedish model of criminalising the purchase of sexual services spreads. In this article, I demonstrate how despite the recent discursive shifts to ‘modern slavery’ and ‘forced labour’, the anti-trafficking transnational legal order itself reinforces, rather than diffuses cultures of sex work exceptionalism. The growing international sex workers’ movement has offered resistance, yet a closer look at the movement and the widespread support that it has garnered for decriminalisation from international organisations, while valuable, helps reveal the greatest cost yet of anti-trafficking discourse, namely, the inability of the sex workers’ movement to produce a sophisticated theory of regulation to reduce levels of exploitation within sex work, one which is commensurate with the informality and heterogeneity of sex markets the world over. Finally, to the extent that neoabolitionist projects derive legitimacy from interventions abroad, especially in the global South, I chronicle the edifice on which it rests in one such context, namely India, to demonstrate how countries in the global South are not merely conduits for the global North’s preoccupation with moral gentrification through neo-abolitionism, but rather, that the circuits of global governmentality while influential, are highly contingent, thus producing opportunities for creative forms of mobilisation by sex workers.

Where Are the Male Victims of Human Trafficking?

Although male trafficking constitutes a considerable part of the human trafficking flow, men are rarely identified as victims. Victims of labor-related trafficking, mainly men, are being overlooked. The same happens with the marginal but not negligible percentage of male victims of sexual exploitation. Identification is crucial to promptly assist, support, and protect victims of trafficking. The overall objective of this chapter is to identify the causes and consequences of the invisibility of male victims of human trafficking. It aims to show the association of human trafficking with female non-citizens being trafficked for prostitution, combined with a securitarian approach to migration control, interferes with efforts to identify and protect all victims of human trafficking. As a result, male victims of human trafficking are prevented from accessing justice, thus rendering the transposition and implementation of the Palermo Protocol and the Anti-Trafficking Directive contradictory and ineffective.

Buruh Migran dan Human Trafficking: Studi Tentang Peningkatan Perdagangan Manusia dari Indonesia ke Malaysia

Human trafficking is a serious Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) faced by countries globally, including Indonesia and its neighbor, Malaysia. Both countries are categorized as tier 2 in the Palermo Protocol watchlist for their ineffective implementation of national laws and regulations to prevent or stop human trafficking. While Indonesia becomes the source country for human trafficking, Malaysia is the receiving country with the most Indonesian victims of human trafficking. There has been an increasing number of cases in 2014-2016. This paper aims to answer the main research question: what has caused the increase of human trafficking cases between Indonesia and Malaysia within this period? While internal factors from the source country influence human trafficking, external and personal factors contribute to the cases.

Diffusing human trafficking policy adoption

Chapter Two narrows the focus to a case study analysis of Russia, Latvia, and Ukraine and examines how human trafficking policies diffuse in these three most-similar case studies from Eurasia. The results demonstrate that internal determinants such as state commitment to human trafficking policy and interest group strength are more important to policy adoption than external pressures from the international community. Conversely, state capacity and bureaucratic restructuring impede policy adoption. Instead of identifying international influence as an all-encompassing reason for policy adoption, data suggested that policy adoption was influenced by multifaceted pressures such as the Palermo Protocol, US TIP reports, the Council of Europe, and EU and ultimately country dependent. The chapter argues that policymaking is more nuanced than blind compliance with international treaties, as the literature suggests, and reveals that there is no black box of policymaking because even in authoritarian (Russia) and semi-authoritarian (Ukraine) regimes, policymaking does not occur in a vacuum. This type of policymaking shows that interest groups and policy entrepreneurs work within the constraints of national policymaking to adopt human trafficking policies even in non-democratic political systems.

Introduction: Diffusing the politics of human trafficking from Europe to Asia

The introduction examines the politicization of human trafficking in Eurasia and how these politics affect the policy adoption and implementation in this region. The chapter presents a definition for human trafficking and examine the scope and manifestations of the crime in source and destination countries of Eurasia. It discusses the adoption of the Palermo Protocol and explore the patterns of human trafficking dynamics across the region from Europe to Eurasia. Internal and external human trafficking constraints and different gendered and racialized approaches to trafficking policy that make ethnic minorities in the region more vulnerable to human trafficking are also discussed. Victim stereotypes perpetuated in the trafficking policies of Eurasia, have produced their own regional type of ideal victim ‘Natashas’ but increasingly men and children from this region are victims of labor exploitation suggesting that there are factors at play within these countries that encourage human trafficking.

Legal Analysis Of Human Trafficking Case As A Transnational Organized Crime That Is Threatening State Security

Human trafficking is a form of transnational crime. One of the cases that occurred in 2019 was the torture of one of the Female Workers even being made a sexual gratification is one proof of the cruelty of human trafficking. Several Conventions have been held to prevent human trafficking. The UN in 2000 issued the Palermo Protocol on Preventing, Eradicating and Punishing Trafficking in Persons. The perpetrators of human trafficking have violated human rights because of exploitation. The Government of Indonesia issued The Act Number 21 of 2007 concerning the Eradication of the Criminal Act of Trafficking in Persons as an action to prevent trafficking in persons. Efforts to protect victims are also carried out by protecting, helping to resolve victims' problems and repatriating victims.