'It is clear to [the] trafficked woman that if she identifies herself as a 'victim of trafficking', she will eventually be sent home to be reunited with her misery once again. So she chooses not to identify herself as a 'victim of trafficking' - in order not to become a victim of anti-trafficking'.
GAATW's new report 'Collateral Damage: The Impact of Anti-Trafficking Measures on Human Rights around the World' [1], is a collection of research on eight different countries: Australia; Brazil; Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH); India; Nigeria; Thailand; United Kingdom; and the United States. Each contribution analyses and attempts to assess the impact of anti-trafficking initiatives on human rights - highlighting that enforcing the law and upholding human rights do not necessarily amount to the same thing, and revealing numerous examples where anti-trafficking measures in these countries have been counter-productive for the very people they are meant to assist.

The report uses a consistent framework to assess each country, focusing on the following:
* What constitutes 'human trafficking' in the country concerned?
* Current legal framework
* Specific laws and government policies and their inadequacies
* Laws, policies and practices on immigration and migrant workers
* Human rights impacts of these laws and policies
* Measures to remedy counter-productive effects of anti-trafficking measures (where relevant).
As well as providing an analysis of anti-trafficking initiatives from a rights perspective, however, the report succinctly summarises current international human rights standards applicable to trafficking in persons. These standards are used ad hoc throughout the report as benchmarks against which to assess a country's policies and practices, which in itself is extremely helpful for anyone interested in the human rights obligations that individual states should be respecting.
At the outset, GAATW assert their argument in all cases is that any negative consequences of anti-trafficking initiatives are unnecessary, and the result of negligence on the part of the government and other actors. Their stance is that negative consequences are NOT an essential by-product of anti-trafficking efforts, and it is this position that forms the backbone of the report. .
A trend that begins to emerge from each contribution is that anti-trafficking measures in these countries generally lack an understanding of the phenomenon itself. In addition there is a lack of an appropriate balance between effective law enforcement and the human rights of trafficked persons and migrant workers, and a failure to balance the protection of trafficked persons and their human rights. Another common trend is that governments are predominately focused on law enforcement and 'have given higher priority... to declaring slavery and similar abuse illegal, than to spelling out how such forms of abuse are to be eradicated or how, when doing so, to safeguard the human rights on the individuals who have been subjected to abuse' (p1).
The report suggests this is somewhat symptomatic of the nature of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN Trafficking Protocol). The UN Trafficking Protocol 'focuses on encouraging states to adopt and enforce laws against trafficking... The first category of measures, those linked to law enforcement, is obligatory for all states ratifying the Protocol... Virtually all the other provisions in Article 6, which is concerned with assistance, are optional for ratifying states to implement, rather than being presented as rights for individuals who have been trafficked.' (p5). This effectively leaves these provisions open for interpretation by individual states, who are merely asked to CONSIDER implementing support measures.

The Editor of the report, Mike Dottridge, asserts that none of the countries in the report are adhering to international human rights standards, citing Principle 8 of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking (first issued in 2002) as one example. Principle 8 emphasises that '...protection and care shall not be made conditional upon the capacity or willingness of the trafficked person to cooperate in legal proceedings'. (p41).
An example of this is Australia, which is one of the few countries where sex work is regulated or decriminalised, and has a National Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking in Persons, with one of the main components being 'victim support and rehabilitation'. At the surface, this component provides comprehensive victim support to trafficked persons, but is actually conditional on the trafficked person assisting the authorities with investigations or prosecutions of traffickers. This conditionality means that 'only a narrow category of trafficked persons can access appropriate support' (p41), and represents a strong focus on the crime and punishment of trafficking, rather than a human rights based approach to those who have been trafficked.

The report indicates that, 'even if it delivers some short-term benefits for law enforcement, the long-term practice of making assistance conditional on cooperation with law enforcement contributes to making trafficked persons suspicious of law enforcement agencies and unwilling to talk openly about their experiences, consequently hindering rather than helping with prosecutions.' In addition '...many people who have been trafficked find themselves in a complicated predicament. They are not 'pure victims' who fit neatly into the UN Trafficking Protocol definition, but have agreed to cross borders illegally or to earn money illicitly... All this makes them wary of cooperating with law enforcement officials.' (p14-15)
A major issue that has also emerged from the report is that governments tend to emphasise the exploitation of the prostitution of others in their anti-trafficking measures. As a result, other forms of trafficking into forced labour and the larger issue of migration receive little or no attention and women in the sex industry are negatively impacted. Contributor Ratna Kapur, for example, describes India as displaying 'a morally conservative approach to human trafficking... [and] a profound misunderstanding of the phenomenon'. According to Kapur, 'anti-trafficking initiatives in India have emerged almost exclusively from within the debates around the legality or illegality of prostitution' (p114).
As a consequence 'anti-trafficking initiatives reproduce assumptions about women as passive, incapable of decision-making, and in need of protection...[the] framework has not succeeded in detaching itself from these hidden agendas, and consequently it has proven to do little good for the trafficked person and great harm to migrants and women in the sex industry' (p137). Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) experiences a similar situation, according to Barbara Limanowska, with 'no recognition in the law that people might be trafficked and subjected to forced labour, in and from BiH, other than for the purpose of sexual exploitation... [and] all cases of migrant prostitution perceived to be cases of trafficking...'.
GAATW illustrates that anti-trafficking measures have a long way to go if they are to achieve positive outcomes for trafficked persons. Whilst many steps have been taken in countries to respond to human trafficking, moral as well as political agendas impede progress, and there is an identified need for governments to be working more effectively with non-government organisations that have knowledge and expertise to foster a greater understanding of trafficking, and to develop a human rights based approach.
The contributors all have significant expertise in trafficking, migration, labour and human rights issues, and provide thoughtful analysis and assessment of each country. Seven years after the UN Trafficking Protocol was adopted in 2000, the report is an excellent overview of how some countries are addressing (or not addressing) the issues.
Notes:
[1] Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), 2007. Collateral Damage: The Impact of Anti-Trafficking Measures on Human Rights around the World. Available to download from
http://www.gaatw.org