By Martin Stillar

Trafficking in human beings is a serious violation of human rights and human dignity, and is considered one of the worst crimes of all (Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, n.d.). As a global phenomenon that can only be tackled at a global level and in an international context, human trafficking also affects Austria, which is both a country of destination and a country of transit due to its central location in Europe. Trafficked persons originate mainly from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. The phenomenon of human trafficking has intensified during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the area of labour exploitation, since economic hardship in particular makes people vulnerable to exploitation. Since the COVID-19 pandemic frequently has an impact on family income too, a growing number of children often have to work instead of going to school in order to support the family financially. This increases their vulnerability to exploitation. In order to tackle trafficking in human beings, Austria established a multidisciplinary task force in 2004 that includes representatives from all relevant federal ministries and government offices, the provinces, the social partners and specialized non-governmental organizations. One of the roles of the task force is to draw up the National Action Plan on Combating Human Trafficking. The current National Action Plan 2021–2023 contains over 100 concrete goals to tackle human trafficking. At the criminal law level, the offences of “trafficking in human beings” and “cross-border trafficking in prostitution” were introduced back in 2004. In Austria, people who are the object of one of these two criminal offences are regarded as trafficked. In addition, the offence of “exploiting a foreigner” was created in 2006. The number of actual convictions for one of these criminal offences is relatively low in Austria and accounts for only a fraction of those third-country nationals identified as trafficked persons in Austria. A fundamental requirement for protecting trafficked persons is that the precarious situation of these people is detected and that they are subsequently identified as trafficked persons. In Austria, a clear separation between “detection” and “identification” is discernible to only a limited extent, especially if the police – who are also responsible for identification – are involved right from the start. This distinction is also of only minor importance for care and support services. These services are funded by the State and are provided by victim protection organizations as soon as a presumed human trafficking situation is suspected, without any official intervention. Services can be accessed anonymously, voluntarily, free of charge and without the immediate involvement of the police, meaning that support is available unconditionally in Austria. In comparison with other countries, this seems to be a unique support service for trafficked persons. The victim protection organizations LEFÖ-IBF and MEN VIA can autonomously identify trafficked persons in order to provide these care and support services, and are thus able to offer support at a very early stage. The distinction between “detection” and “identification” appears blurred in an Austrian context, but a more concrete and formal separation of these two steps does not seem necessary for a better protection of trafficked persons – at least outside the setting of detention pending removal.

Vienna: International Organization for Migration, 2021. 58p.

By Verité

Workers are at heightened vulnerability to modern-day slavery when they have been brought to work away from their homes. This vulnerability is generated or exacerbated by the involvement of labor brokers. Labor brokers act as the middlemen, facilitating a connection between potential workers and their eventual employers. The system of labor brokerage is widespread, opaque, sometimes corrupt, and largely lacking in accountability. In some cases brokerages are substantial, well-organized companies. In others they are informal in their structure and outreach. In all cases their presence in the recruitment and hiring “supply chain” increases the vulnerability of migrant workers to various forms of forced labor once on-the-job. The debt that is often necessary for migrant workers to undertake in order to pay recruitment fees, when combined with the deception that is visited upon them by brokers about job types and salaries, can lead to a situation of debt-bondage – which, according to Anti-Slavery International, is “probably the least known form of slavery today, and yet it is the most widely used method of enslaving people.”1 When a migrant worker finds herself in a foreign country, with formidable recruitment debt and possibly even ancestral family land hanging in the balance, on a work visa that ties her to one employer and a job that doesn’t remotely resemble the salary and conditions that were promised to her by her labor broker, she has fallen into what Verité calls a HIRING TRAP. There are few global workplace problems in more urgent need of attention. This report begins by offering key findings from recent Verité research on the intersection of brokers, migrant workers and slavery. This research was performed in a variety of sectors and locales across the globe, including: the migration of adults from India to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States of the Middle East for work in construction, infrastructure and the service sector; the migration of children and juveniles from the Indian interior to domestic apparel production hubs; the migration of adults from Guatemala, Mexico and Thailand to work in U.S. agriculture; and the migration of adults from the Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal to the Information Technology sector in Malaysia and Taiwan.

Amherst, MA: Verité, 2010. 72p.

By Quinn Kepes, et al.

This report describes research conducted on the relationship between labor brokerage and the risk of forced labor among Nepali migrant workers employed abroad. The research examines forced-labor triggers in Nepal and India and receiving-country mechanisms that encourage forced labor in Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), and Israel. The role of Guatemala and Mexico as transit countries for Nepali workers traveling illegally to the U.S. is also explored.

Amherst, MA: Verité. 2012. 108p.

By Verité

Verité’s research indicates that Peru is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of gold. Verité’s research also suggests that over 20 percent of Peru’s gold is produced illegally, and that indicators of vulnerability to forced labor are present in the illegal mining sector. Verité found evidence that illegal gold is often “laundered,” after which it makes its way into Peru’s exports and the global supply chain. Although there are few official statistics on the amount of illegally produced gold that makes its way into global markets, Verité found cases in which gold exported to Switzerland could be traced back to areas in which the vast majority of gold is produced illegally and/or in which indicators of vulnerability to forced labor and human trafficking were present. In addition to using a large amount of gold in its banking sector, Switzerland is a global clearinghouse for gold, with much of the gold it imports eventually making its way into gold bullion, jewelry, watches, and electronics that end up in the hands of consumers in countries around the world.

Amherst, MA: Verité , 2013. 120p.

By Verité

Malaysia’s electronics sector workforce includes hundreds of thousands of foreign migrant workers who come to Malaysia on the promise of a good salary and steady work – an opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their families. But many are subject to high recruitment fees, personal debt, complicated recruitment processes, lack of transparency about their eventual working conditions, and inadequate legal protections. Unscrupulous behavior on the part of employers or third-party employment agents can exacerbate vulnerability to exploitation, but the system in which foreign workers are recruited, placed and managed is complex enough to create vulnerability even in the absence of willful intent to exploit. The conditions faced by foreign electronics workers in Malaysia have the potential to result in forced labor. In 2012, Verité received funding from the US Department of Labor to conduct a study to determine whether such forced labor does, in fact, exist in the production of electronic goods in Malaysia.

Amherst, MA: Verité, 2014. 244p.

By Verité

More than twenty million men, women and children around the world are currently believed to be victims of human trafficking, a global criminal industry estimated to be worth $150.2 billion annually. As defined in the US Department of State’s 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report), the terms “trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” refer broadly to “the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion,” irrespective of whether the person has been moved from one location to another. Trafficking in persons includes practices such as coerced sex work by adults or children, forced labor, bonded labor or debt bondage, involuntary domestic servitude, forced child labor, and the recruitment and use of child soldiers. Many different factors indicate that an individual may be in a situation of trafficking. Among the most clear-cut indicators are the experience of coercive or deceptive recruitment, restricted freedom of movement, retention of identity documents by employers, withholding of wages, debt bondage, abusive working and living conditions, forced overtime, isolation, and physical or sexual violence. The United States Government is broadly committed to combating trafficking in persons, as guided by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, and the UN Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. In September 2012, the United States took an unprecedented step in the fight against human trafficking with the release of a presidential executive order (EO) entitled “Strengthening Protections Against Trafficking in Persons in Federal Contracts.” In issuing this EO, the White House acknowledged that “as the largest single purchaser of goods and services in the world, the US Government has a responsibility to combat human trafficking at home and abroad, and to ensure American tax dollars do not contribute to this affront to human dignity.” The EO prohibits human trafficking activities not just by federal prime contractors, but also by their employees, subcontractors, and subcontractor employees. Subsequent amendments to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Defense Acquisition Regulations System (DFARS) in the wake of the EO will affect a broad range of federal contracts, and will require scrutiny by prime contractors of subcontractor labor practices to a degree that has not previously been commonplace. Top level contractors will now need to look actively at the labor practices of their subcontractors and suppliers, and to consider the labor involved in production of inputs even at the lowest tiers of their supply chains.

Amherst, MA: Verité , 2017. 355p.

By Maureen Moriarty-Lempke, and Estacio Valoi

Stakeholders in the spheres of human rights and development have contributed literature describing how the use of exploited labor – including labor as the result of human trafficking – can contribute to deforestation. There is a parallel field of literature that documents the impacts that environmental degradation and deforestation can have on human populations. What both of these spheres lack, however, is documentation of the specific patterns of labor exploitation, human trafficking, and child labor experienced by workers directly involved in forestry and/or adjacent sectors, as well as the means by which deforestation can create vulnerabilities to human trafficking.

Amherst, MA: Verité , 2020. 165p.

By Max Travers

Previous research in the field of human rights and development has examined how the use of exploited labor – including labor as the result of human trafficking – can contribute to deforestation. There is a parallel field of literature that documents the impact that environmental degradation and deforestation can have on human populations. What both of these spheres lack, however, is documentation of the specific patterns of labor exploitation, human trafficking, and child labor experienced by workers directly involved in forestry and/or adjacent sectors, as well as the means by which deforestation can create vulnerabilities to human trafficking.

Amherst, MA: Verité , 2020. 172p.

By Elaine Jones and Pauline Tiffen

Today, over 30 million people in the world have fled their country because their lives, safety, or freedom have been threatened. Low- and middle-income countries - like Colombia, Turkey, and Bangladesh - host 85% of all refugees in the world. These are countries where many multinational companies have suppliers - and yet most companies don’t think about the implication of their supply chain including refugees. With the global refugee crisis showing no signs of abating, multinational companies will become even more exposed to refugee populations via their suppliers.

Amherst, MA: Verité , 2021. 61p.

By Julian Rademeyer

Six thousand rhinos have fallen to poachers’ bullets in Africa over the past decade and only about 25,000 remain – a fraction of the tens of thousands that roamed parts of the continent fifty years ago. Dozens more have been shot in so-called “pseudo-hunts”. Across Europe, castles and museums have been raided by criminal gangs in search of rhino horn trophies. And in the United States, businessmen, antique dealers – even a former rodeo star and a university professor – have been implicated in the illicit trade. Driven by seemingly insatiable demand in Southeast Asia and China, rhino horn has become a black market commodity rivalling gold and platinum in value. Borders, bureaucracy and a tangle of vastly different laws and legal jurisdictions are a boon to virulent and versatile transnational criminal networks and a bane to the law enforcement agencies rallied against them. Again and again efforts to target syndicates are hamstrung by corruption, governments that are unwilling or incapable of acting, a lack of information-sharing and approaches to tackling crime that wrongly emphasise arrests and seizures over targeted investigations and convictions as a barometer of success.

Geneva: Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime , 2016. 64p.

By Mark Micallef | Matt Herbert | Rupert Horsley Alexandre Bish | Alice Fereday | Peter Tint.

The first report of the project, ‘The human conveyor belt broken’, published in early 2019, described the fall of the protection racket by Libyan militias that underpinned the surge in irregular migration between 2014 and 2017. That report, in turn, updated information published by the GI-TOC publication ‘The human conveyor belt’, released in March 2017.

This report builds on these studies and maps human smuggling trends and dynamics between 2019 and 2020, as well as the political and security dynamics that impacted and influenced smuggling and trafficking during the period. It underscores both the continuing importance of smuggling from and through Libya, Tunisia, Niger, Chad and Mali and the impact of conflict, insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic on this industry but also its resilience in the face of these phenomena.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 110p.

By Human Rights Watch.

Millions of children in India toil as virtual slaves, unable to escape the work that will leave them impoverished, illiterate, and often crippled by the time they reach adulthood. These are India’s bonded child laborers. A majority of them are Dalits, so-called untouchables. Bound to their employers in exchange for a loan, they are unable to leave while in debt and earn so little they may never be free of it. The Indian government knows about these children and has the mandate to free them. Instead, for reasons of apathy, caste bias, and corruption, many government officials deny that they exist at all. Somewhere between sixty to 115 million children are working in India, most in agriculture, others picking rags, making bricks, polishing gemstones, rolling beedi cigarettes, packaging firecrackers, working as domestics, and weaving silk saris and carpets. Since Human Rights Watch’s first investigation in 1996, the Indian government has taken some positive steps to address the plight of working children and bonded laborers of all ages. At the same time, there are serious problems with implementation on the ground. In the last decade, efforts in some regions have driven bonded child labor out of factories and into households, which are partially exempt from the law, changing bonded child labor’s manifestation but not its prevalence or intensity. In many areas, bonded child labor still flourishes openly.

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003. 89p.

by Johanna Schlintl, Liliana Sorrentino

This report has been developed in the framework of the Project REST, which aims to strengthen the rights to residence and international protection for third-country nationals trafficked in Europe, by examining promising practices, gaps and challenges in their actual access to these rights.

The objective of this report is to explore avenues and challenges, in order to secure a durable solution for trafficked persons in terms of long-term residence and access to socio-economic rights, including the right to work. Trafficked persons’ access to long-term or permanent residence is an integral part of their right to effective remedies. Securing a long-term residence for trafficked persons is one way to guarantee their dignity and foster their access to justice. A durable solution in terms of residence provides trafficked person with a foundation for safety and stability, and hope for a future perspective.

The report puts centre stage the protection of the rights of trafficked persons. It emphasises that they are bearers of rights as women, men, children, victims of crime, victims of gender-based violence, refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers. It underlines in particular the rights and protection needs of trafficked persons with regard to access to residence and to international protection. It intends to show how integrating and combining protection under the human rights, asylum and anti-trafficking regimes can contribute to strengthening the overall protection of the rights of trafficked persons, and enhance the prospects of long-term residence and the access to durable solutions. To this end, the report analyses the international and European legal framework on access to residence permits and to international protection for trafficked persons.

Vienna: Interventionsstelle für Betroffene des Frauenhandels (LEFÖ-IBF) . 2021. 108p.

By Petra Follmar-Otto Heike Rabe

The idea that human trafficking leads to contemporary forms of slavery and that it must be considered a human rights violation has now gained acceptance. At the same time, it can be said that combating human trafficking is still primarily understood and approached as a crime reduction issue. In that context, trafficked persons are seen as sources of information and potential witnesses in court proceedings. However, they play only a marginal role as subjects with their own legal rights. Although the law has long allowed victims to participate in criminal court proceedings as part of an accessory prosecution procedure (Nebenklage) and to claim wages, compensation, and damages for pain and suffering, a corresponding legal practice in Germany has not become established. Advisory services and assistance are lacking, and pragmatic ways to improve the chances of success in court have hardly been tested. This situation is unacceptable from the viewpoint of human rights. Exercising legal rights goes beyond the hoped-for – and often desperately necessary – material compensation and also holds a great deal of symbolic importance for trafficked persons. This is a way for them to regain their sense of being independent subjects, often after having long experienced a total loss of self-determination over their own lives. Active advocacy for one’s own rights offers an opportunity to restore and increase awareness of one’s own self-worth. However, the chances of success are minimal without advice and assistance along this arduous path. The first part of this publication identifies needed im - provements in the way trafficked persons are treated and derives specific policy recommendations from them. The second part discusses options for the creation of a legal aid fund that can provide advisory services and assistance to trafficked persons to increase their willingness to exercise their legal rights and their prospects of success. Supporting measures such as education and information are also included. The German institute for Human Rights hopes that this publication will promote the progress of a human rights approach to combating human trafficking, particularly in German legal practice.

Berlin: German Institute for Human Rights, 2009. 97p.

By Bellwood-Howard, Imogen and Abdulai Abubakari.

Children work throughout the Lake Volta fisheries value chain. It is commonly assumed most have been trafficked. Research and advocacy has focused on dangers to young boys harvesting fish, and poverty as a driver, precluding attention to harms experienced by non-trafficked children, girls’ experiences and work-education dynamics. More work is needed on the proportions of children who fish and perform harmful work; structural, ecological and historical contexts; young people’s agency in pursuing fishing work; and why attention to trafficking dominates.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2022. 28p.

By Kharel, Arjun, et al.

This study examined the media portrayal of different actors involved in human trafficking from Nepal to understand the reported changes in international routes of human trafficking from Nepal after 2015. The findings of the study are based on content analysis of 480 news articles published in six national newspapers in Nepal in a five-year period from 2016 to 2020, along with existing literature and interviews with newspaper reporters and editors. Most of the alleged perpetrators reported in the media were male while females dominated reportage on ‘victims’. An overwhelming majority of the reported victims of sex trafficking were females while the reported victims of labour trafficking were evenly split between males and females. This is in contrast to the actual distribution of male and female migrants from Nepal, where male workers lead female workers on labour permits for overseas employment by a margin of over 80 per cent. Analysis of the news articles showed that India still remains, as it has historically been, the top trafficking destination and transit country. Countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia have emerged as new destinations while Myanmar along with some countries in Europe, Africa, and Latin America have emerged as new transits for human trafficking from Nepal. The study recommends the allocation of resources for investigative journalism and training of reporters on robust reporting including critical gender analysis in order to improve the reporting of human trafficking in Nepali media. Coordination between government agencies and revision of counterproductive policies can contribute to curb human trafficking and encourage safe migration for employment.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2022. 96p.

By Wendy S. Hesfor.

Violent Exceptions turns to the humanitarian figure of the child-in-peril in twenty-first-century political discourse to better understand how this figure is appropriated by political constituencies for purposes rarely to do with the needs of children at risk. Wendy S. Hesford shows how the figure of the child-in-peril is predicated on racial division, which, she argues, is central to both conservative and liberal logics, especially at times of crisis when politicians leverage humanitarian storytelling as a political weapon. Through iconic images and stories of child migrants, child refugees, undocumented children, child soldiers, and children who are victims of war, terrorism, and state violence, Violent Exceptions illustrates how humanitarian rhetoric turns public attention away from systemic violations against children’s human rights and reframes this violence as exceptional—erasing more gradual forms of violence and minimizing human rights potential to counteract these violations and the precarious conditions from which they arise.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2021. 282p.

Edited by Paolo Cuttitta, and Tamara Last.

Causes, Dynamics and Consequences of Migration-related Mortality. A 2018 report by two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) revealed that US Border Patrol agents ‘routinely intimidate, harass, and surveil humanitarian-aid volunteers, thus impeding the administration of humanitarian aid’ along the US-Mexico border. Furthermore, they ‘stab, stomp, kick, drain, and confiscate the bottles of water that humanitarian-aid volunteers leave along known migrant routes’ (La Coalición de Derechos Humanos and No More Deaths 2018). More broadly, through the criminalization of humanitarian assistance and the ‘weaponization’ of the terrain, US authorities make themselves responsible for the suffering, death and disappearance of many people (Morgan-Olsen 2018; Osuna 2018). On the other hand, Border Patrol agents often carry out rescue operations to save migrants, which – they argue – demonstrates ‘their dedication in protecting human life’ (U.S. Customs and Border Protection 2019). They are presented as true humanitarians (Price 2018). According to US President Donald Trump, the problem of border deaths can only be solved with more border control. ‘Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end’ was his comment on the death of two children occurred shortly after their crossing from Mexico (Tatum 2018)

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. 175p.

Edited by: Aletta Biersack, Margaret Jolly, Martha Macintyre.T

The postcolonial states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu operate today in a global arena in which human rights are widely accepted. As ratifiers of UN treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, these Pacific Island countries have committed to promoting women’s and girls’ rights, including the right to a life free of violence. Yet local, national and regional gender values are not always consistent with the principles of gender equality and women’s rights that undergird these globalising conventions. This volume critically interrogates the relation between gender violence and human rights as these three countries and their communities and citizens engage with, appropriate, modify and at times resist human rights principles and their implications for gender violence. Grounded in extensive anthropological, historical and legal research, the volume should prove a crucial resource for the many scholars, policymakers and activists who are concerned about the urgent and ubiquitous problem of gender violence in the western Pacific.

Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2016. 398p.

By Harald Bauder.

International borders have become deadly barriers of a proportion rivaled only by war or natural disaster. Yet despite the damage created by borders, most people can’t – or don’t want to – imagine a world without them. What alternatives do we have to prevent the deadly results of contemporary borders? In today’s world, national citizenship determines a person’s ability to migrate across borders. Migration Borders Freedom questions that premise. Recognizing the magnitude of deaths occurring at contemporary borders worldwide, the book problematizes the concept of the border and develops arguments for open borders and a world without borders. It explores alternative possibilities, ranging from the practical to the utopian, that link migration with ideas of community, citizenship, and belonging. The author calls into question the conventional political imagination that assumes migration and citizenship to be responsibilities of nation states, rather than cities. While the book draws on the theoretical work of thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, David Harvey, and Henry Lefebvre, it also presents international empirical examples of policies and practices on migration and claims of belonging. In this way, the book equips the reader with the practical and conceptual tools for political action, activist practice, and scholarly engagement to achieve greater justice for people who are on the move.

Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016. 150p.