3071-The political economy of new slavery

David Ould 67
trafficking victims. Long experience shows that a whole set of practical
measures are necessary to enable people who have been trafficked or
enslaved to enjoy their human rights properly: most importantly, states
have to provide some material assistance to enable former slaves to
become self-sufficient economically and thus avoid perpetual dependence.
The failure of states to do this on many occasions has meant
that slavery has only been half-abolished, 5 that the victims are left in
a limbo of dependence on their former exploiters or others, and that
long-term resentment builds up, as witnessed with the claims for
reparations at the recent UN World Conference Against Racism. Because
of the failure of governments to compensate slaves at the end of the
historical triangular slave trade, their descendants and the governments
of the countries from where the slaves were taken have increasingly
pressed claims for reparations. This is looked at in detail in Geraldine
Van Bueren’s chapter in this book. Needless to say, as in the case of any
other victims of crime or major human rights abuse, the immediate
health and other practical needs of victims of slavery also have to be
attended to.
When confronted with the question of what protection to guarantee
to victims of trafficking in the UN trafficking protocol, government
representatives did what they do so often when making international
law: they vacillated and fudged. Eventually they agreed a long list of
assistance and protection provisions in Article 6 of the protocol, but
made all of them optional rather than mandatory:
• in appropriate cases and to the extent possible under domestic law,
each State Party shall protect the privacy and identity of victims
of trafficking in persons, including, inter alia, by making legal proceedings
relating to such trafficking confidential.
• each State Party shall ensure that its domestic legal or administrative
system contains measures that provide to victims of trafficking in
persons, in appropriate cases:
(a) Information on relevant court and administrative proceedings;
and
(b) Assistance to enable their views and concerns to be presented and
considered at appropriate stages of criminal proceedings against
offenders, in a manner not prejudicial to the rights of the defence.
• each State Party shall consider implementing measures to provide
for the physical, psychological, and social recovery of victims of