3071-The political economy of new slavery

6 Introduction
Or does a government’s responsibility go much further? Anti-Slavery
thinks it does.
Anti-Slavery and other NGOs were particularly vocal in calling
for protection measures to be included in the European framework
decision. This is because they have direct experience of assisting victims
of trafficking and other extreme forms of exploitation. Anti-Slavery
International found that efforts to outlaw and punish various forms
of slavery will only work if governments at the same time provide
protection and measures to rehabilitate or reintegrate victims.
In considering the rights of victims of trafficking and other forms of
slavery under international law, Anti-Slavery and others have identified
dozens of measures that states have an obligation to take to protect
and assist the victims. The message of this chapter is that slave labour
is not a problem that has reappeared just recently, but rather a serious
pattern of abuse, which the world’s richest societies have tended to
ignore, assuming it cannot still exist either at home or abroad. They
have ignored it because it undermines their confidence in their own
ability to put an end to the gross violations of human rights from the
past, such as slavery in the Americas in the nineteenth century or forced
labour in the colonial and totalitarian regimes of the mid-twentieth
century.
Chapter 4 presents an overview of the specific development of
Belgian policy to combat trafficking in human beings. This policy is
based on four pillars: the administrative level, labour law, legislation
and implementation of the criminal code, and victim support. The
chapter describes each of these four pillars and ends with an overview of
the efforts of a Belgian NGO, Payoke, to support victims of trafficking.
Chapter 5 looks at how, months after the onset of ‘Operation Infinite
Justice’ in Afghanistan, Afghan girls and women are subjected to an
exponential increase in sexual and physical violence. In the lawless
country where even the Allied troops do not dare to leave their compounds,
women are more victimized than ever. Human trafficking has
now reached a climax in Afghanistan whereby a girl can be sold for as
little as a 100kg of wheat.
Deployment of international troops in the region will invariably
increase the demand for slaves, judging by experience of what is
labelled by Elwert (2000) as the post-conflictual market of violence.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the Kosov@ province, 1 have been subjected
to the mushrooming of brothels since the end of their respective
recent violent conflicts. The objective of this chapter is to draw lessons
from the post-conflictual trafficking in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to