By The Soufan Center

Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) approaches are unlikely to succeed in the long term without addressing a range of structural factors, specifically political, economic and social drivers including public perceptions of policing; the socio-economic exclusion of particular communities and ethnic, race, religion or gender groups; and the lack of economic opportunities for young people, all of which create the sense of injustice on which violent extremism feeds.

Washington, DC: The Soufan Center, 2020. 64p.

By Human Rights Watch

As the harmful effects of immigration detention become more widely known and the appropriateness of detaining migrants is increasingly questioned, governments are looking at alternatives to detention as more humane and rights-respecting approaches to addressing the management of migrants and asylum seekers with unsettled legal status. This report examines alternatives to immigration detention in six countries: Bulgaria, Canada, Republic of Cyprus, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States to highlight viable, successful alternatives that countries should implement before resorting to detention. While the report provides an analysis of specific alternatives to detention (often referred to as ATDs) in each country, it is not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of all alternative programs available.

Each country featured in this report has taken a different approach to alternatives to detention. Some focus more heavily on surveillance and others on a more person-centered, holistic approach. Ultimately, this report finds alternatives that place the basic needs and dignity of migrants at the forefront of policy, such as community-based case management programs, offer a rights-respecting alternative to detention while simultaneously furthering governments’ legitimate immigration enforcement aims.

New York: HRW, 2021. 103p.

By Human Rights Watch

Since 1999, advocates have gathered to commemorate transgender victims of violence on November 20, the Transgender Day of Remembrance. As of November, 2021 was the deadliest year yet of anti-transgender violence in the United States, exceeding the record 44 transgender people whose deaths were recorded the year before. Violence and harassment against transgender people are widespread in the United States; as one transgender advocate told Human Rights Watch, virtually every transgender person can recount instances when they have felt fearful for their safety and security in public. Recent debates over transgender rights have increased the visibility of transgender rights, but have increased hostility toward transgender people as well, with lawmakers and media personalities unfairly demonizing transgender individuals as “mentally ill,” predatory, or dangerous. Reports suggest that bias-motivated crimes targeting transgender individuals are increasing, and incidents when transgender people narrowly escape violence, where transgender people are reluctant to report violence to police for fear of revictimization, or where law enforcement officers fail to document and respond to violence mean that estimates almost certainly undercount the scope and prevalence of these crimes. The topic of anti-transgender violence frequently appears in news coverage when fatal violence has occurred, and the number of people killed each year is often used as a rough proxy for bias-motivated violence against transgender people more generally. But transgender people are frequently subjected to other forms of violence, including harassment and violence from strangers, family violence, intimate partner violence, and police violence, which may be even less visible to lawmakers and the public.

New York: HRW, 2021. 71p.

By Human Rights Watch

“‘How Can You Throw Us Back?’: Asylum Seekers Abused in the US and Deported to Harm in Cameroon,” traces what happened to the estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians deported from the United States on two flights in October and November 2020, and others deported in 2021 and 2019.

New York: HRW, 2022. 168p.

By Human Rights Watch

The 29-page report “‘Their Faces Were Covered’: Greece’s Use of Migrants as Police Auxiliaries in Pushbacks,” found that Greek police are detaining asylum seekers at the Greece-Turkey land border at the Evros River, in many cases stripping them of most of their clothing and stealing their money, phones, and other possess

New York: HRW, 2022. 42p.

By Human Rights Watch

Gang violence has plagued Central America’s “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras for more than a decade. Children are particularly targeted by gangs in these three countries. In Honduras, for example, over 400 children under age 18 were killed in the first half of 2014, most thought to be the victims of gang violence. Many more are pressured to join gangs, often under threat of harm or death to themselves or to family members. Girls face particular risk of sexual violence and assault by gang members. As a result of these and other risks to their lives and safety, children have been leaving these three countries, on their own and with family members, for years.

New York: HRW, 2016. 164p.

By Felipe Jácome

This paper argues that the violence experienced by migrants crossing Mexico in their way to the United States needs to be understood as a case of structural violence. Based on several months of field work conducted along the migrant route in Mexico, the paper emphasizes that trans-Mexican migrants suffer not only from forms of direct violence such as beatings, kidnappings, and rape, but also endure great suffering from expressions of indirect violence such as poverty, hunger, marginalization, and health threats. Addressing trans-Mexican migration as a case of structural violence is also crucial in grasping the complex dynamics that characterize this violence, including the impunity and systematization of violence, and the social forces, policies, and institutions that perpetuate it.

Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Center for Latin American Studies, 2008. 38p.

Edited by Julia Planitzer and Helmut Sax

This comprehensive Commentary provides the first fully up-to-date analysis and interpretation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. It offers a concise yet thorough article-by-article guide to the Convention’s anti-trafficking standards and corresponding human rights obligations.

Cheltenham, UK; Northampton MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020. 552p.

Edited by Franck Düvell, Irina Molodikova & Michael Collyer

Transit migration is a term that is used to describe mixed flows of different types of temporary migrants, including refugees and labor migrants. In the popular press, it is often confused with illegal or irregular migration and carries associations with human smuggling and organized crime. This volume addresses that confusion, and the uncertainty of terminology and analysis that underlies it, offering an evidence-based, comprehensive approach to defining and understanding transit migration in Europe.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. 237p.

By Masja van Meeteren

In 'Irregular Migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands', Masja van Meeteren studies the different ways in which irregular migrants live in Belgium and the Netherlands. The book offers an empirically grounded theoretical critique of the dominant research practice that focuses on 'survival strategies', relies on comparisons of migrant communities and overemphasizes structural explanations. Instead, Irregular Migrants takes irregular migrants´ aspirations as a starting point of analysis. Based on this innovative research approach, key questions are answered regarding the lives of irregular migrants. How can we understand their patterns of economic and social incorporation, the transnational activities they engage in, and the significance of different forms of capital? Drawing on intensive participant observation, as well as more than two hundred in-depth interviews with irregular migrants and representatives of organizations that are involved with them, Irregular Migrants develops much-needed contextualized insights. As such, it sheds new light on previous research findings and various deadlocked scholarly debates on irregular migrants in Western societies.

IMSCOE Research. Amsterdam University Press. 2014. 250p

By Aysen Ustubici

As concern about immigration has grown within Europe in recent years, the European Union has brought pressure to bear on countries that are allegedly not sufficiently governing irregular migration with and within their borders. This book looks at that issue in Turkey and Morocco, showing how it affects migrants in these territories, and how migrant illegality has been produced by law, practiced and negotiated by the state, other civil society actors, and by migrants themselves. Ayen Üstübici focuses on a number of different aspects of migrant illegality, such as experiences of deportation, participation in economic life, and access to health care and education, in order to reveal migrants' strategies and the various ways they seek to legitimise their stay.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. 249p.

By Steinhilper, Elias

Migrant protest has proliferated worldwide in the last two decades, explicitly posing questions of identity, rights, and equality in a globalized world. Nonetheless, such mobilizations are considered anomalies in social movement studies, and political sociology more broadly, due to 'weak interests' and a particularly disadvantageous position of 'outsiders' to claim rights connected to citizenship. In an attempt to address this seeming paradox, this book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavourable contexts of marginalization. Such a perspective unveils both the odds of precarious mobilizations, and the ways they can be temporarily overcome. While adopting the encompassing terminology of 'migrant', the book focuses on precarious migrants, including both asylum seekers and 'illegalized' migrants.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. 205p.

By Sverre Molland

The book investigates how the United Nations, governments, and aid agencies mobilise and instrumentalise migration policies and programmes through a discourse of safe migration. Since the early 2000s, numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies, and governments have warmed to the concept of safe migration, often within a context of anti-trafficking interventions. Yet, both the policy-enthusiasm for safety, as well as how safe migration comes into being through policies and programs remain unexplored. Based on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Mekong region, this is the first book that traces the emergence of safe migration, why certain aid actors gravitate towards the concept, as well as how safe migration policies and programmes unfold through aid agencies and government bodies. The book argues that safe migration is best understood as brokered safety. Although safe migration policy interventions attempt to formalize pre-emptive and protective measures to enhance labour migrants’ well-being, the book shows through vivid ethnographic details how formal migration assistance in itself depends on – and produces – informal and mediated practices. The book offers unprecedented insights into what safe migration policies look like in practice. It is an innovate contribution to contemporary theorizing of contemporary forms of migration governance and will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and human geographers working within the fields of Migration studies, Development Studies, as well as Southeast Asian and Global Studies.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 229p.

By Angela Hefti

This thought-provoking book conceptualizes femicide as a multifaceted human rights violation and proposes state responsibility for group-related risks of violence against women and girls. In doing so, it reassesses the concept of femicide, analysing it in view of the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, as well as several facets of human rights. Angela Hefti challenges the common definition of femicide, extending it beyond the killing of women due to their gender to include elements of victim blame, sexual abuse, forced marriage and delayed investigations by authorities. Chapters address femicide in the context of the African, Inter-American and European regional and universal human rights systems. Case studies from Iraq, Nigeria and Mexico provide a fundamental understanding of the multidimensional and worldwide nature of femicide. Spanning several key academic debates, the book incorporates underlying feminist legal theory and approaches pertaining to the subordination of women and girls in society, arguing that femicide should qualify as an autonomous human rights violation.

Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA:: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022. 330p.

Edited by Erol Balkan and Zümray Kutlu Tona

Refugees on the Move highlights and explores the profound complexities of the current refugee issue by focusing specifically on Syrian refugees in Turkey and other European countries and responses from the host countries involved. It examines the causes of the movement of refugee populations, the difficulties they face during their journeys, the daily challenges and obstacles they experience, and host governments’ attempts to manage and overcome the so-called “refugee crisis.”

New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2022. 344p.

Edited by Uğur Ümit Üngör

The twentieth century has been called, not inaccurately, a century of genocide. And the beginning of the twenty-first century has seen little change, with genocidal violence in Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka, and Syria. Why is genocide so widespread, and so difficult to stop, across societies that differ so much culturally, technologically, and politically? [-]That's the question that this collection addresses, gathering a stellar roster of contributors to offer a range of perspectives from different disciplines to attempt to understand the pervasiveness of genocidal violence. Challenging outdated beliefs and conventions that continue to influence our understanding, Genocide constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on mass violence.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016. 279p.

By Russell D. Howard and Colleen Traughber

In a globalized and increasingly interconnected world, the transfer of information, expertise, and relationships are becoming more complex and more commonplace. The interconnectedness of criminal organizations that span not only countries but across regions of the globe is troubling. However, more troubling is the possibility of the linking of transnational criminal organizations with insurgent and terrorist organizations as addressed in this work by Brigadier General (retired) Russ Howard and Ms. Colleen Traughber. The radical ideologies propagating politically motivated violence now have the opportunity to leverage and participate in traditionally criminal enterprises. This melding of form and function provides criminals with new networks and violent extremists with new funding sources and potential smuggling opportunities. General Howard and Ms. Traughber delve into the nexus between violent extremist elements and transnational criminal elements by first clarifying whether a real problem exists, and if so, what is the appropriate role for Special Operations Forces (SOF) in confronting it. The authors bring rigor to the subject matter by dissecting the issue of intention and opportunities of criminal organization and violent extremists. The question is confounded by the authors who note the wide variance in the motivations and opportunities of both different criminal organizations and extremist organizations. What the authors do make clear is that the trafficking of humans, weapons, drugs, and contraband (HWDC) is a natural way for the criminals and extremists to cooperate. To bring the issue into focus, the authors systematically examine case studies dealing with the nexus between specific organizations and HWDC trafficking opportunities. Human trafficking in Europe and the former Soviet Union; weapons trafficking in the Far East, Asia, and South America for money; the narcotics trade by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia; Hezbollah and Kurdistan Workers’ Party, as well as contraband smuggling of cigarettes, are all used to examine the extremist/criminal nexus. The connections become clear as the authors discuss each of the HWDC issues within the nexus; what is also clear is that often the nexus is a simple marriage of convenience.

MacDill AFB, FL: Joint Special Operations University, 2013. 99p.

By Thi Hoang

Decades of wars and internal conflicts have driven generations and millions of Afghan families into impoverishment, illiteracy, unemployment, and displacement, rendering them unable to provide for their household members, particularly children. Political instability and conflicts have increased human suffering and vulnerabilities, eroded community resilience, stripped people of legitimate and viable economic options, opportunities, and livelihoods, as well as amplifying (in several cases also creating new forms of) human trafficking activities and practices. Drawing on existing academic and grey literatures, expert interviews and media reports, this paper first provides a brief overview of human trafficking situations, forms, their widespread reach and practices in the Afghan context before and after the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021. Second, it discusses the potential implications and impact of various actors’ policies, intentions and perspectives both on the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan, and on human trafficking in particular. It argues for prioritising humanitarian assistance, and recommends that stakeholders pursue a pragmatic approach to responses and negotiations that puts human lives at its centre, to prevent worsening the humanitarian crises, exacerbating vulnerability to human trafficking, and further loss of life.

Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham.2022. 62p.

Edited by Pierre Le Roux, Jean Baffie and Gilles Beullier

The Trade in Human Beings for Sex in Southeast Asia brings together 28 senior scholars and experts hailing from all over the world in various disciplines: Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Political Science, Psychology, Psycho-Criminology, Medicine, Law, Economics, History, as well as Humanitarian assistance to give a general statement on slavery, prostitution and trafficking in persons in this region. In recent years, prostitution in women and children for the purpose of sexual exploitation has been steadily increasing at an alarming rate. Underlying reasons are not only the ongoing process of globalization and the lagging behind of the concerned emerging countries, but also a number of cultural factors specific to this region. The problem's background is given in Part 1: A Look at the Past; Part 2 provides the data from field studies in human trafficking and prostitution; Part 3 deals with additional related problems and suggest possible responses.

Bangkok: IRASEC-Observatory., 2010. 488p.

By Élodie Apard, Éléonore Chiossone, Precious Diagboya, Aurélie Jeannerod, Bénédicte Lavaud-Legendre, Cynthia Olufade, Cécile Plessard, Sara Panata, Vanessa Simoni and Sam O. Smah

In an innovative manner, Packing research addresses human trafficking from Nigeria to Europe, beyond the perspective of the ‘victim/madam’ duo as classically analysed. It postulates the involvement of several social groups whose activity does not originate in the practice of human trafficking, neither is reduced to it. The offense of trafficking is therefore perceived as based on an organization that, beyond the criminal activity itself, has a highly structured and legitimized social, community and religious base. More precisely, this research describes the operation – activities and development – of each of religious groups (such as the neo-traditional Temples in Edo State, Nigeria), women’s groups (such as the Ladies’ clubs) and cultist groups (including Black Axe (Aye) and Supreme Eiye Confraternity) in Nigeria and France and then identifies their role and level of involvement in human trafficking. This research highlighted different elements that support the thesis of a misuse of beliefs, own practices and operating rules applied by these groups for criminal purposes.

Ibadan: IFRA-Nigeria - Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique - Nigeria, 2019. 183p.