The Advocates for Human Rights published their labour trafficking protocol guidelines on the 31st of January 2019. The guidelines are designed to help communities identify and respond to labour trafficking victims throughout Minnesota, with a particular focus on young victims in their early 20s and younger. The guidelines draw on data collected from over 100 experts and are designed to account for the complex needs of a region that has rural, suburban and urban environments.
The protocol guidelines consist of 6 sections which give:
- Background and overview to labor trafficking.
- The universal protocol, which provides guidelines to the provision of an effective and comprehensive response to labor trafficking, including sections on collaborative responses, identification, and victim protection.
- A protocol implementation worksheet as a simple tool to assist communities plan their responses to labor trafficking.
- Sector specific protocol guidelines for use in conjunction with the universal protocol;
- Recommendations for changes to the law and policy to improve Minnesota’s response to labor trafficking victims.
- Appendices.
The report was funded Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, and the Minnesota Department of Health. The content is solely the work of The Advocates for Human Rights.
The Full report can be found here.
The report, Criminal Networks Involved in the Trafficking and Exploitation of Underage Victims in the European Union analyses data from Europol’s action against child trafficking between 2015 – 2017. The importance of this analysis into child trafficking reflects minors being an extremely vulnerable sector of society. Children are often lured into labour or sexual exploitation, and as a result suffer severe physical and psychological damage. This report provides key information that highlights limitations in current systems, that can be used to create a strategy against future trafficking of children.
Key findings from the report:
- Child trafficking in the EU Trafficking and exploitation of male minors (especially for sexual exploitation) still remains an under-reported phenomenon at EU level.
- Traffickers active in the EU target underage victims mainly for sexual exploitation but also labour exploitation, to beg and to commit criminal acts, such as pickpocketing and shoplifting. Children are also trafficked for illegal adoption and sham marriages.
- Children are trafficked from around the world to the EU. The majority of nonEU networks reported to Europol involved Nigerian OCGs which traffic female minors and women to be sexually exploited. The OCGs are spread along the entire trafficking route and operate in several EU Member States.
- The majority of EU trafficking networks for child sexual exploitation reported to Europol are small in size (usually fewer than five key suspects) and active in one country at a time.
- Particularly harmful EU networks are large family clans which mainly traffic children for the purpose of begging, forced criminality and sexual exploitation. These clans operate in several countries at the same time and rotate victims on a regular basis.
- Children in migration and unaccompanied minors are at higher risk of trafficking and exploitation. Although the scale of trafficking of unaccompanied minors remains unknown, a future increase is expected.
For the full report Criminal Networks Involved in the Trafficking and Exploitation of Underage Victims in the European Union, October 2018, read here.
GRETA’s report on human trafficking response in the Netherlands marks progress and positive actions being taken to address the crime, including:
- Increased funding for police and prosecution services dealing with trafficking cases
- The creation of the Victim Identification Board, an independent multidisciplinary body tasked with the identification of victims of human trafficking
- The awareness-raising campaigns concerning trafficking for different forms of exploitation and the steps taken to strengthen cooperation in the field of labour migration
- Attention paid to victim compensation and many decisions by courts ordering perpetrators to pay compensation to victims of trafficking
However GRETA’s report marks the concern with the decreasing number of prosecutions and convictions for trafficking offences recently. Sexual exploitation is the most common driver of human trafficking within the Netherlands, however the number of prosecutions for sex trafficking halving over the last five years. It is suggested that Dutch authorities thoroughly investigate trafficking offences and ensure prosecution with ‘proportionate and dissuasive sanctions’, as well as ‘improve the identification of and assistance to child victims of trafficking’.
For the full October 2018 Report concerning the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings by the Netherlands, read here.
Despite the UK’s Modern Slavery Act being groundbreaking and globally leading legislation, it is still a prominent issue within the UK that needs to be addressed at a preventative stage. This report updates the 2012 research relating to the prevention of human trafficking. Findings problematise the tendency to frame the anti-trafficking response through a criminal justice lens.
The report concludes that
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The UK continues to lack an overall strategy to prevent trafficking in adults and children;
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This leads to an inconsistent and fragmented approach to the prevention of trafficking;
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The UK’s lack of a strategic response means that prevention is often seen through the prism and policies of immigration and crime, hindering effective preventative action;
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The result of this approach and the wider policies of austerity, a hostile immigration environment and the threats posed by Brexit, is that the vulnerability of adults and children to exploitation is not reduced and the UK risks contravening its positive obligation to prevent trafficking.
For the full September 2018 report ‘Before the Harm is Done: Examining the UK’s response to the prevention of trafficking’, read here.
Freedom Fund’s research follows on from a 2010 report with findings showing one third of girls working Kathmandu’s adult entertainment sector. The commercial sexual exploitation of children is reported in alarmingly high statistics where massage parlours, dance bars, cabin restaurants and guest houses and across the wider hospitality industry are used as fronts to allow the behaviour. Their recent 2018 research seeks to explore the root of the issue in the demand for child sexual exploitation. It concludes that while there is common understanding amongst those involved in the industry that sex with children is unacceptable, there are cultural factors and historical narratives that excuses their behaviour. This report highlights the issues with this status quo and challenges such moral norms to guide policy and regulatory action against this demand.
For the full October 2018 Freedom Fund Report: ‘Minors in Kathmandu’s adult entertainment sector: What’s driving demand?’ read here.
Europol’s latest report follows as human trafficking is a crime priority in the 2018 – 2021 EU Policy Cycle. Notably, Europol reports that approximately 28 percent of global trafficking victims are children, who are preyed on as they are one of the most vulnerable and weak social sectors. In the EU, traffickers target minors primarily for sexual exploitation, also labour exploitation and forced criminality. A prominent issue is the lack of reporting around male minors trafficked or exploited within the EU.
The aim is to disrupt organised crime groups (OCGs) involved in intra-EU human trafficking and human trafficking from the most prevalent external source countries for the purposes of labour exploitation and sexual exploitation, including those groups using legal business structures to facilitate or disguise their criminal activities.
For the full October 2018 report ‘Criminal networks involved in the trafficking and exploitation of underage victims in the EU’, read here.
The Local Authority Support for Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children is a fact sheet by Coram Children’s Legal Centre that details information for local authorities who are supporting unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. It provides key information from the Children Act 1989, National Transfer Scheme, Entitlements, Financial support, Advocacy, Legal representation and Challenging inadequate support.
Local authority support for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) by Coram, read here.
The New ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention 1999 was developed by a coalition of over 50 NGO’s that make up the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) who aim to “facilitate the promotion, implementation and monitoring of the Convention on the Rights of the Child”. Their Sub-Group focussing on Child Labour is responsible for this document which provides guidance to children’s rights groups. They demonstrate case studies from Togo and Guatemala to show the fundamental role civil society groups can have in eradicating the worst forms of child labour.
For the full New ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention 1999, read here.
The report Home Truths Wellbeing and Vulnerabilities of Child Domestic Workers provides evidence from a case studies executed in Peru, Costa Rica, Togo, Tanzania, India and Philippines over 2009 interviewing approximately 3,000 children, mostly between the ages of 10 – 17. The study found that half of these children were paid or unpaid domestic workers, and the data concludes that “many of these children are seriously harmed on a psychosocial level and that policy and programme level interventions are urgently needed”.
For the full report Home Truths Wellbeing and Vulnerabilities of Child Domestic Workers by Anti-Slavery International March 2013, read here.
UNICEF’s report Victim, Not Criminal analyses the current legal framework concerning non-punishment of child victims of human trafficking involved in forced criminality. The report critiques the implementation of the Section 45 slavery defence and provides recommendations for change. Key recommendations include:
- The reasonable person test relating to the statutory defence in Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act should no longer apply to children
- Mechanisms are put in place by the prosecuting agencies and government to properly monitor the implementation of the non-punishment principle across the UK
- Further training and awareness-raising is made available for police, prosecutors, judges, legal representatives and relevant practitioners on the protections from prosecution available for trafficked children.
For the full report Victim, Not Criminal – Trafficked Children and the Non-Punishment Principle in the UK, read here.