• Trafficking
• Trafficking in women dossier

Trafficking

What are the present gaps in identification and prosecution of trafficking for forced labour cases? Are there deficiencies in approaches to prevention and to compensation for the abuses suffered by the victims of trafficking? This paper considers the key role of labour and employment law and institutions in addressng these questions. Concerns identified include the role of employment tribunals, the legal oversight of work permits, and the linkages between forced labour and inadequate subcontracting practices. The problems, as well as examples of good practices, are illustrated through specific cases from a range of European countries.

Some of the main findings are:

• penal laws punishing trafficking in persons across Europe have mostly adopted the definition of trafficking in persons provided in the Palermo Protocol
• one major shortcoming of this approach is that these penal laws fail to resolve certain ambiguities that exist in the Palermo Protocol definition, particularly in its use of the term ‘abuse of vulnerability’-as well as  different approaches to defining ‘abuse of vulnerability’. In addition, countries across Europe have defined the term ‘forced labour’ differently
• many source countries for victims of trafficking are becoming transit and destination countries; however, many country penal codes do not reflect these changes adequately

Because the experience of each country can vary greatly within Europe, the author’s recommendations are intended more as suggestions of potential areas of improvement. They include:

• define ‘abuse of vulnerability’ specifically and precisely in the penal code as a mode of coercion to reduce confusion and bias in judicial decisions that result from ambiguity
• criminalise specific acts often employed by traffickers to coerce individuals to involuntarily consent to exploitation, including seizure of identity documents, threatening to reveal confidential secrets and debt bondage
• ensure that any penal code provision that punishes trafficking for forced labour exploitation includes a mode of coercion as an element of the crime, while separately punishing sub-standard labour conditions through other penal code or administrative laws
• countries should provide maximum protection to victims of trafficking, as obligated under international human rights law
  
  

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