Liliana Sorrentino is an independent expert on human rights, migrant rights and trafficking in human beings with fifteen years’ experience as an NGO activist, policy adviser and researcher in Europe and the CIS. She first worked with NGOs assisting refugees and trafficked persons. She subsequently worked for ten years at the OSCE, including as Executive Advisor to the OSCE Special Representative for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings. Over the past few years, she has been a consultant and researcher for various organisations, including HEUNI, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights, the International Trade Union Confederation, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, the European Commission, the Council of Europe and UNODC. She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Toine Spapens is Full Professor of Criminology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He specialises in research on organised crime and international law enforcement co-operation. His empirical work includes trafficking in illicit firearms, ecstasy production, large-scale cannabis cultivation, illegal gambling and environmental crime. From 2008–11 he was a researcher and advisor in the Emergo project, set up by the Dutch authorities to curb organised crime, in particular human trafficking in the Amsterdam Red Light District. His theoretical focus is on criminal networks, the regulation of (former) illegal markets and multi-agency approaches to serious and organised crime problems.
Rebecca Surtees is an anthropologist and senior researcher at NEXUS Institute, a human rights research centre in Washington DC, focused on human trafficking. She has experience both in implementing anti-trafficking programmes and as a researcher in Asia, Europe, the former Soviet Union and West Africa, having worked for the United Nations, NGOs and international organ-isations. Recent research includes a longitudinal study of reintegration of Indonesian trafficking victims, research on trafficking amongst refugees in Serbia, trafficking of fishers and research into victim identification in the Balkans and South-East Asia.
Dr Natalia Szablewska is a faculty member in the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University (Australia) and Adjunct Professor at the Royal University of Law and Economics (Cambodia). She has over fifteen years’ experience across the public sector, governmental and non-governmental organisations and academia in five countries. Her research is interdisciplinary in nature and she employs gender and human rights approaches to examine forced migration, in particular human trafficking. Since 2012, Natalia’s research focus has been predominantly on Southeast Asia and Australasia and she is an active member of the Asia Pacific Regional Refugee Rights Network and the Trafficking Network (Australia).
Kristof Van Assche is Research Professor in Health Law and Kinship Studies at the University of Antwerp. His research focuses on the legal aspects of organ transplantation and trafficking. Other research topics include surrogacy, assisted reproductive technologies, biobank research, abortion and euthanasia. He is a member of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group, the Ethics Committee of the Transplantation Society, the working group on Living Organ Donation of the European Platform on Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of organ Transplantation (ELPAT), and the working group on organ trafficking of the Belgian Ministry of Justice.
Jan Van Dijk is Emeritus Professor of Victimology at the International Victimology Institute of the University of Tilburg and Visiting Professor of Victimology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is Vice-President of the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) of the Council of Europe. He is a Vice President of the Dutch State Compensation Fund and presides over the chamber handling cases of sexual abuse in youth institutions. He is a former Director of the Research Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and of the crime prevention programme of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In 2012, he received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology and in 2016 the European Criminology Award.
Marieke van Doorninck is a historian, currently working as coordinator of ASKV/Refugee Support in Amsterdam. Until 2015, she was the Advisor of Public Affairs at La Strada International. Marieke advised its member organisations on policy making and lobbying strategies in the field of human rights and anti-trafficking. From 2006 till 2014, Marieke was an elected Councillor in the Amsterdam council for the Green Party (GroenLinks). In 2005, she was the coordinator of the ICSRE (International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe), which organised the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration in the European Parliament in Brussels.
Prof Dr Mirjam Van Reisen holds the University Chair of Computing for Society at Leiden University and the Chair of International Relations, Innovation and Care at Tilburg University. She is a member of the Dutch Government Council on International Relations and Chair of the Council on Development Cooperation. In 2012, she received the Golden Image Award from Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the category of ‘Peace and Development’. Mirjam Van Reisen has authored numerous publications, including Human Trafficking in the Sinai: Refugees between Life and Death (with Estefanos and Rijken, 2012), The Human Trafficking Cycle: Sinai and Beyond (with Estefanos and Rijken, 2014), as well as Sinai Trafficking: Origin and Definition of a New Form of Human Trafficking (with Rijken, 2015).
Gertjan Van Stam is Research Fellow at the Science and Industrial Technology Development Centre (SIRDC) in Zimbabwe. He has been involved with strategic developments in ICT in Africa since 1987, holds an MTech (cum laude) from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, and is writing his PhD. His goal is to engender recognition of indigenous progress in communities and to identify and inspire local talent. His academic quest is for a contextual, cultural framework on the outset and dynamics of change in Africa. He engages in continuous transdisciplinary action research and disseminates his deductions in person and writings within local, national and international settings, and at this site: www.vanstam.net/gertjan-van-stam.
Linda Verhaak, MSc, is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. She is the Expert Team Leader for victims of human trafficking at Equator Foundation. Her clinical expertise areas are the diagnostics and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and comorbid (personality) disorders. She has extensive expertise in the psychological treatment of victims of human trafficking and is involved in the current Equator RISE study on the psychodiagnostic profile and treatment outcomes in female victims of sexual exploitation.
Claudia Vorheyer is Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology, University of Zurich, Switzerland, where she has the main responsibility for qualitative methods of empirical social research. She received her PhD from the Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Magdeburg, with her thesis on governance practice concerning prostitution and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Central in her research is the focus on everyday policy realisation at the local level. Research findings academically as well as practically relevant have been published in a monograph as well as in several book chapters and journal articles.
Dr Gus Waschefort is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. His primary research interests relate to contemporary challenges in the context of armed conflict in Africa, including working towards enhancing the level of participation from within Africa in the global discourse on the Law of Armed Conflict. In this context, Gus has undertaken extensive research on the use and recruitment of child soldiers. With a background in photojournalism, Gus has worked in active conflict zones across Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, South Sudan and Angola.
Marjan Wijers works as an independent researcher, consultant and trainer in the field of human rights, human trafficking and sex workers’ rights. In the 1980s, she stood at the cradle of the Dutch Foundation against Trafficking in Women, where she worked for twelve years. Later she worked at the Clara Wichmann Institute, Dutch Expert Centre on Women and Law, and the Verwey-Jonker Institute, carrying out research into social issues. From 20
03–2006 she was President of the European Commission’s Experts Group on Trafficking in Human Beings. She studied social sciences and law and specialised in human rights law.
Yvonne C. Zimmerman is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO), where she teaches courses on Christian social ethics, feminist and womanist ethics, sexual ethics, and the movement to end human trafficking. She has been researching and writing about the US’s anti-human trafficking movement for over a decade and is author of the book Other Dreams of Freedom: Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Tara Zivkovic is a third-year law student at Yale Law School. She holds degrees from New York University (BA) and Sciences Po Paris (MA). During her master’s degree, she focused on international public policy, development and gender. As part of her legal studies, she has specialised in public international law and served as a law clerk at the European Court of Human Rights. She has worked specifically on issues of human trafficking in the context of international human rights litigation.
Foreword
Among the serious forms of criminality that the international community has agreed to combat since the 1990s, trafficking in human beings (THB) is probably the most striking.
The aim of traffickers is to subject women, men and children to exploitation–sexual exploitation, slavery, forced labour (including exploitation of forced begging and forced criminality) or the removal of organs. As States still fail to fully comply with their obligations to prevent this scourge, to bring perpetrators to justice, to identify the victims and to protect their rights, the values of liberty, security and dignity, proclaimed since the end of the Second World War as a common goal, are trampled upon every day and everywhere.
THB has this particularity: to gather in one single crime many aspects of other crimes. It may occur in peace time, but also during armed conflicts or post-conflict situations; it is perpetrated by criminal organisations and individuals; it targets women, men and children; it uses corruption; and it constitutes a source of huge criminal assets that will nurture money laundering (and other forms of criminality) and make the criminals very rich.
THB also results in victims and their families being subjected to serious acts of retaliation. It shows how the Internet may be channelled to recruit victims, who suffer significant physical and psychological damage. In THB cases, we still see systematic discredit put on the victims and their testimonies by the accused during criminal procedures. This illustrates both the importance of collecting evidence through the most modern technologies, and of avoiding situations where victims who were not identified by the authorities, and who did not dare report their real situations, are prosecuted for offences they were forced to perpetrate, because the principle of not punishing trafficked people for offences they were compelled to commit has not been implemented by prosecution authorities.
This intolerable situation was supposed to be alleviated from the year 2000, following the adoption of the Palermo Protocol – deeply reinforced by the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (2005), which places the victim of trafficking at the centre of new legal obligations based on prevention, partnerships, prosecution of traffickers and protection of victims. The monitoring of the implementation of this treaty by the Parties is one of its major added values – with the creation of an independent and multi-disciplinary group of experts elected and mandated by the Parties, the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA), that I had the honour to chair for six years, and which has contributed significantly to the development of international anti-trafficking law and the harmonisation of domestic laws and practices.
That said, and despite good progress at the time this foreword was drafted, further efforts by States and their administrations are still needed, for some aspects of anti-trafficking activity and victim support and protection remain incomplete, and sometimes weak. The country reports regularly published by GRETA on the 47 Parties to the Council of Europe Convention, as well as the work of important authorities such as the UN Special Rapporteur, illustrate vividly those areas where efforts need to be stepped up. It seems to me that one of the main difficulties is that victims of THB continue to be denied their rights to protection and support.
The migration crisis of the last two years and the global economic situation have been cited as reasons both for concerns about the current situation, on the one hand, and, on the other, to closely monitor the actions taken by States to comply with their anti-trafficking obligations. States still need guidance on implementing the letter, and achieving the purpose, of these duties; they also need to be reminded that the human rights approach to action against human trafficking is not an obstacle but, on the contrary, the catalyst for the eradication of THB and, as such, should be the keyword of national policy.
All of these achievements, and the outstanding challenges, explain why I am very honoured to introduce this book, the purpose of which is to take stock of the most recent developments in action against THB, and to set the agenda for the future. The very added-value of it, among others, is for sure the multi-disciplinary approach, as well as the diversity of the contributors – who are experts coming from all continents. Analysis and discussion of the legal developments, including case law, are included, as is State practice as it is and should be.
As you will see, the victims of THB are one of the key subjects of this work, and this is an editorial choice that must be applauded. In fact, the protection of human rights of any victim of THB is, first and foremost, a duty under public international law and, in particular, human rights law. But it is also obvious that this very protection may also serve the purpose of criminal justice by increasing the number of prosecutions where the victims will be able to testify as to their physical and mental suffering, win the compensation due to them, and, at least, avoid re-trafficking. That is why all stakeholders should be aware of the added value of implementing a human rights approach as required, and propounded, by the Council of Europe Convention; and this book will help to promote it.
To conclude, and after almost twenty years of dedication to fighting THB and exploitation, I remain optimistic, as I believe are the contributors to this book, about the potential to effectively combat THB, and grateful to those women and men of goodwill, from the public sector and civil society, who refuse to surrender whilst facing such horrifying attacks to human dignity.
I hope and believe that this book will contribute to understanding the enormity of THB, as well as to encouraging States to fully embrace their duties to help and protect the victims of this crime, in realisation of their fundamental human rights.
Nicolas Le Coz
Acknowledgements
Writing a book with 42 different chapters by even more contributors has taken some time and effort, but we think it has been worthwhile. We are grateful to all those who agreed to contribute their expertise to enable us to compile what we believe is a genuinely multi-disciplinary analysis of all of the major facets of trafficking in human beings and its political and legal discourses.
We would also like to thank Alyson Claffey at Routledge for all of her advice and substantial assistance in bringing this project to fruition. And we are extremely grateful to Edward Ditch-field for his superb editorial work on the various chapters.
We are grateful to the World Health Organization for permission to reproduce the Figure in Chapter 10 by Yosuke Shimazono, as appeared in the report of the 2nd Global Consultation that took place in Geneva, 28–30 March 2007 and titled “Second Global Consultation on Critical Issues in Human Transplantation: Towards a Common Attitude to Transplantation”.
Ryszard Piotrowicz, Conny Rijken and Baerbel Heide Uhl
Abbreviations
AAPTIP Australia-Asia Program to Combat Trafficking in Persons
ACTIP ASEAN Convention against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children
AFP Australian Federal Police<
br />
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
AML Anti-Money Laundering
AOP Action-Oriented Paper
AP Additional Protocol
APA ASEAN Plan of Action against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children
APG Asia/Pacific Group
APOV Abuse of a Position of Vulnerability
ARFMM ASEAN Regional Fisheries Management Mechanism
ARDC African Refugee Development Centre
ASD Acute Stress Disorder
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
ATC Anti Trafficking Coordinator
ATLEU Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit
AU African Union
AU.COMMIT African Union Commission Initiative against Trafficking
CBSS Council of the Baltic Sea States
CC Criminal Code
CCCIF Command Centre for Combating Illegal Fishing
CCTV Closed-Circuit Television
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women
CMD Common Mental Disorders
CoE Council of Europe
CoRC Committee on the Rights of the Child
CPF Charoen Pokphand Foods
CPUE Catch Per Unit Effort
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
CTF Counter Terrorist Financing
DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations
DPH Direct Participation in Hostilities
EASO European Asylum Support Office
EC European Commission
ECCAS Economic Community of Central African States
ECHR Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
ECtHR European Court of Human Rights
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
EEG European Commission’s Group of Experts on Trafficking in Human Beings
Routledge Handbook of Human Trafficking Page 3