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

workers to authorities if they refuse to accept the working conditions. Currently, few
traffi ckers are prosecuted, whereas workers are locked up and deported. Part of the
diffi culty in prosecuting employers, contractors, recruiting and transporting agents may
be due to the current trend towards increasing penalties for the hiring of “illegal” workers
and punishing the off-the-books workers themselves. 62
Several forms of coercion in both recruitment and employment can be diffi cult to
detect. Besides physical restraints there can also be restraints which are less overt such as
confi scation of papers, non-payment of wages, and threat to denounce irregular migrant
workers to authorities.
Fraud, deception and abuse of power
The Palermo Protocol adds to coercion, fraud, deception and abuse of power as a means
of traffi cking. Importantly, the Palermo Protocol connects the issue of coercion to that
of consent. In other words it is absolutely irrelevant if the victim apparently voluntarily
entered or stayed in a situation or conditions of labour exploitation if they were put in
that situation through the use of threats, force, coercion, abduction, deception or fraud
or by an abuse of power or an abuse of their own position of vulnerability. Most of these
concepts will already be clear in national law however coercion and abuse of power/
vulnerability are unlikely to be. 63 It therefore becomes important that these concepts
are explained so that law enforcers can appropriately identify cases of traffi cking and use
adequate investigation techniques and protection measures to enable potential victims
to give a full account of their situation and for this to be properly identifi ed as a case of
traffi cking. This is particularly important in cases of labour exploitation where cases cover
a wide range of situations including those of regular economic migrants whose vulnerable
position as foreigners (perhaps also with limited language skills and knowledge of their
rights), is exploited by traffi ckers for forced labour. 64
If the original facilitators of migration act in good faith, it would be diffi cult to categorize
them as traffi ckers. However, the employer, or some other middle-man, might have
every intention to exploit the migrant worker. What might begin as a migration turns
into traffi cking. In a study of over 140 traffi cked children in the United States, it was
found that every one of them was smuggled with their parents’ consent, but neither the
62 In OSCE Human Traffi cking for Labour Exploitation/Forced and Bonded Labour: Identifi cation –
Prevention – Prosecution Report of the 3rd Alliance against Traffi cking in Persons Conferences on
Human Traffi cking for Labour Exploitation/Forced and Bonded Labour. Vienna, 7 and 8 November
2005 p. 13.
63 OSCE Occasional Paper Series n. 1. A Summary of Challenges: Facing Legal Responses to Human
Traffi cking for Labour Exploitation in the OSCE Region. p. 8.
64 Ibid. And Anti-Slavery International “Traffi cking for Forced Labour UK Country Report”, (Skrivankova,
K.) 2006: in a study conducted in the UK of 27 migrant workers traffi cked into forced labour none of
the cases were identifi ed as traffi cking by the agencies that initially identifi ed them and the majority of
the victims had entered the UK legally.
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