Trafficking in human beings: human rights and ... - unesdoc - Unesco

and considers the consent of the “victim” irrelevant” 33 do absolutely nothing to help this
confusion. Both of these claims are clearly wrong and it takes a very brief reading of the
defi nition to realise this. The defi nition quite clearly – as will be seen below – requires
certain coercive or fraudulent measures to be used against the victim who then is not
a consensual migrant, and consent is only irrelevant in cases these measures have been
used. It is true that concrete cases may be diffi cult to determine when migrants arrive and
may have consented to the journey but not to elements of exploitation (again this will be
examined below) but that by no means signifi es that the defi nition in itself is unclear or
does not take into consideration the distinctions.
The defi nition developed and agreed to in 2000, as the second to last defi ned Article after
three years of negotiations, by the international community for traffi cking in persons
is found in Article 3 of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Traffi cking in Persons, Especially Women and Children: “Traffi cking in persons shall
mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means
of the threat or force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the
abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or
benefi ts to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of
exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of
others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar
to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”
The defi nition refers to three distinct elements:
ACT MEANS PURPOSE
(what is done) (how it is done) (why it is done)
Recruitment Threat or use of force Exploitation, including
Transport Coercion Prostitution of others
Transfer Abduction Sexual exploitation
Harbouring Deception Forced labour
Receipt Fraud Slavery or similar practices
Abuse of power
or vulnerability
Giving payments
or benefi ts
Removal of organs
All three elements must be present. The only exception is for child victims of traffi cking
who do not require illegal means.
The elements present in the defi nition indicate that traffi cking includes a number of
actors, each of whom may play a role in creating a victim of traffi cking, from the acquaintance
in the victim’s village who knows someone who can organise a job or a visa,
33 Kapur, R.: Migrant Women and the Legal Politics of Anti-traffi cking Interventions, in Cameron,
S. and Newman, E. (Eds.): Traffi cking in Human – social, cultural and political dimensions, p. 114.
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