3071-The political economy of new slavery

Victoria Firmo-Fontan 99
of the brothel in question are rented from the Grahovo municipality
to a businessman from the nearby town of Livno. When attempting
to alert the international authorities, the author was informed that
trafficking was not part of her mandate and that she was setting onto
someone else’s turf. So whose turf is it?
Legal responses
In July 2001, six years after the Dayton Peace Accords, the UN created
the Special Trafficking Operations Program (STOP) to fight trafficking.
Between then and 1 January 2003, IPTF and local police have conducted
over 270 raids and interviewed over 800 women (Vandenberg, 2002).
This part of the chapter will show that while international law has
evolved towards the recognition of trafficking as a rights-based issue,
international workers can still act with impunity with regards to slavery.
Better late than never, the STOP initiative has yet to be fully put into
practice and harmonized between different parts of BiH. Indeed, in
some parts of the country, IPTF human rights officers are given the task
of monitoring borders and trafficking with no previous experience or
consistent training. Moreover, the poor human rights record in some of
their countries of origin does not make some of them the best candidates
to uphold human rights abroad. When the author was stationed in Drvar,
BiH, one Irish national, based in Banja Luka, without any training
in international or human rights law, was in charge of co-ordinating
the monitoring of borders against trafficking. As the issue of trafficking
remains to be addressed within the Republic of Ireland itself, one might
have wondered if a member of the Guarda Siochana was best suited to
address the issue abroad. 12 At the time of research, one STOP team,
based in Doboj, was composed of two officers, who were in charge of
the care of 176 slaves working in more than 30 brothels. The team,
underfunded and understaffed, had been relentlessly asking for support
from HQ Sarajevo. Both officers deplored the fact that they were
unlikely to receive support before the end of their 12-month assignment,
jeopardizing chances of follow-up from one team to the next. They
felt the problem had been addressed far too late by the international
community, and their presence was a drop in the ocean: they had been
able to support eight girls to leave the brothels over a period of six
months. 13 They explained that when the girls are rescued, they are
either deported by the local police, or if they ask, they will be allowed
to talk privately with the IPTF officers, who will then provide shelter for
them through the IOM, based in Sarajevo and funded by the UN Mission