Human Trafficking Notes

Contemporary Slavery
Contemporary slavery (a form of forced or bonded labour, with or without pay, under threat of violence) involves illicit activity, accurate statistics describing the extent of the problem are difficult to obtain.
Contemporary slavery can take a number of forms. The main categories of slavery include:
Forced Labour – This refers to work performed under the threat of a penalty or harm which the person has not voluntarily submitted to, such as threat of hardship, detention, violence or even death to the person or to another person. A person may, for example, be lured by the promise of a legitimate job opportunity and instead forced to work without pay or enduring physical abuse.
Debt Bondage – This refers to a situation where a person is forced to repay a loan with labour instead of money. Debt bondage occurs where the proper value of the labour is not applied towards repayment of the debt, or the type or duration of services are not properly limited. In many cases, the person may be deceived into paying extremely high rates of interest making it impossible to repay the debt.
Sexual Slavery – This involves repeated violation or sexual abuse or forcing the victim to provide sexual services. It can take many forms, including forced prostitution, single-owner slavery, slavery associated with religious practices or another type of slavery such as forced labour where sexual abuse is also common.

Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is the commercial trade or trafficking in human beings for the purpose of some form of slavery, usually recruiting, transporting or obtaining a person by force, coercion or deceptive means. It includes, for example, recruiting or transporting a person for forced labour or debt bondage, or providing or obtaining a person for forced labour or debt bondage by use of force, fraud or coercion, or trafficking people for sexuality.

It should be distinguished from people smuggling as that is the illegal transportation of people across borders, where people voluntarily pay a fee to the smuggler, usually free to continue on their own after arrival in the hope of starting a new life in the destination country.

Human trafficking can involve a whole line of criminal activity, from recruitment and harbouring of victims, to transport and sale, to obtaining or buying and finally exploiting that person in slavery or forced labour. Victims of human trafficking might be recruited in a number of ways.
E.g. They may be lured by a false job offer or offer of migration or a marriage proposal. In other cases, victims may be sold by family members, recruited by former slaves, deceived, intimidated or even physically abducted.

Extent of Human Trafficking
A 2009 Australian Government report, “Trafficking in Persons,” places the number at anywhere from 700 000 to four million. This does not include the millions of people trafficked within their own countries, as it is difficult to detect.
According to the UN’s 2009 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, sexual exploitation is the most documented type of trafficking because it is more frequently reported by countries distinguished from forced labour and debt slavery.
The ILO estimates that at least 56 per cent of all forced labour victims are women and girls
Suggested that illicit profits from human trafficking worldwide may be as high as $92 billion

Legal Responses to Human Trafficking and Slavery
Legal responses to human trafficking began with the worldwide abolition of slavery, largely in the early 20th century through the Slavery Convention of 1926. This evolved to the expansion of this treaty in 1956 by the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Practices Similar to Slavery , this clarified and expanded the definition of slavery, including debt bondage, forced marriage and child slavery.

In 2000, the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, “the Protocol,” as part of a larger treaty tackling transnational crimes. This aimed to provide an overall protection, outlining an appropriate regime of protection, prosecution and prevention in order to effectively and more uniformly combat human trafficking. It was designed for member states to enact into the most appropriate domestic laws.

As of 2010, there are 137 state parties to the Protocol. The UN’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons in 2009 shows that in the past few years the number of states seriously implementing the Protocol has doubled.

Domestic Responses
The Australian government established a human trafficking strategy in 2003 and since then has dedicated almost $60 million to tackling the problem. Australia ratified the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Practices Similar to Slavery on 27 May 2004.

Australia first introduced sexual slavery laws with the Criminal Code (Slavery and Sexual Servitude) Amendment Act 1999 (Cth). This acted was further refined to add more human trafficking offences to the Criminal Code in the Criminal Amendment (Trafficking in Persons Offences) Act 2005 (Cth).

Offences under state and territory legislation include:
Division 270 – Slavery, sexual servitude and deceptive recruiting, contains offences including possession of a slave, engaging in slave trading or entering into any commercial transaction involving a slave. It also contains prohibitions on the deceptive recruiting of a person for sexual servitude
Division 271 – Trafficking in persons and debt bondage. This division makes it an offence to traffic in persons or children, whether internationally or domestically.

In 2004, under the Commonwealth Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking in Persons, which included the aims of prevention, detection and investigation, criminal prosecution, victim support and rehabilitation.

In 2008, the federal government also introduced new measures under the Commonwealth Government Anti-Trafficking Strategy. Some of the measures introduced include:
Increased specialist training and funding for the Australian Federal Police to detect and investigate human trafficking operations
Additional funding and training for the prosecution of human trafficking for Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions
A National Policy Strategy to Combat Trafficking in women for sexual servitude
Victim support measures and special visa arrangements to support victims of trafficking
A targeted Communication Awareness Strategy providing information about trafficking and the help available
Cooperation with regional and international agencies in tackling the sources of human trafficking and prosecution offenders

Non-Legal Responses
International Responses
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and various NGOs are involved in combating slavery and human trafficking. The UN has established a Global Initiative to Fight human Trafficking (UN.GIFT), with the aim of mobilizing non-state actors to help rid the world of human trafficking. UN.GIFT aims to:
Increase awareness about human trafficking
Assist non-state actors (e.g. NGOs) in their anti-trafficking campaigns by encouraging cooperation and joint action between NGOs and efficient prosecution of criminals
Reduce the demand for the exploitation of people and the vulnerability of potential victims, and ensure support for victims who have escaped