3071-The political economy of new slavery

Victoria Firmo-Fontan 103
time consuming, and only falls under the mandate of two officers,
whose dedication, however, is remarkable. Since the officers assess the
international community’s reaction as coming too late, they stress the
importance of prevention, both in BiH for women trafficked out of BiH,
and in the other countries of origin. Prevention should play an essential
role in the general current international efforts to curb trafficking,
as well as in the effort to bring law and order to Afghanistan. So far,
due to a lack of budget, the IOM activities have just been scaled back,
and human trafficking has not been mentioned in the Agreement
on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan, officially binding on
22 December 2001. 21 As well as prevention, assessed later, the impunity
enjoyed by members of the international community with regards to
trafficking should be addressed.
International impunity
The international response to trafficking encounters several major
obstacles, due to the lack of harmonization of prosecution procedures
for criminals as well as the treatment of the trafficked individuals and
their ‘clients’. At the time of writing, SFOR, as part of NATO, has no
formal regulations sanctioning the use of prostitutes by their personnel
as a result of the fact that, under Appendix B to Annex 1A of the Dayton
Agreement, NATO personnel are placed under the jurisdiction of their
respective nations (Human Rights Watch, 2002b). In the case of IPTF
monitors, no member of the mission can be arrested or detained within
BiH. They have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. Moreover,
should a Bosnian court seek to prosecute an IPTF officer, this could
only be achieved if an immunity waiver was issued by the UN Secretary
General. In the case of the EUPM, provisions for the prosecution of
mission members are incumbent on their countries of origin. As no
harmonization of procedure to punish users has been put in place, the
author interviewed representatives of three European armed forces and
one police service. The interviews were carried out both in a formal and
an informal manner. Upon enquiry on the training of peacekeeping
personnel in relation to the issue of trafficking, the Irish Defence Forces
mentioned that the issue will be raised in various Human Rights
lectures given at the United Nations Training School of Cunnagh. The
French Inter-Army Health Services stated that they train their soldiers
to be cautious of sexually transmitted diseases. The British Army was
unable to inform the author on existing overall policies pertaining to
the awareness of trafficking and the use of prostitutes by its troops