Security sector reform programs restructure police forces to improve how they respond to gender-based violence (GBV). However, significant weaknesses persist in how police officers enforce anti-GBV laws. One area of weakness is the attrition of cases; officers fail to refer the majority of cases to the courts but rather withdraw them at the police station. Studies of police behavior in post-conflict African states have attributed the withdrawal of cases to corruption, poor professionalism, patriarchal gender norms, and underequipped police forces. Though salient, these conditions do not adequately explain police responses to GBV crimes. Even in police stations with the most poorly trained, corrupt, underequipped, and biased officers, a small number of cases advance to court. This dissertation investigates this puzzle by studying officers’ responses to domestic violence, internal human trafficking, and rape in two Liberian counties. While officers withdraw over 50 percent of domestic violence and internal human trafficking cases, they withdraw less than five percent of rape cases every year. This study employs 150 interviews with officers of the Women and Children Protection Section (WACPS) as well as survivors of violence, bureaucrats, and staff of international organizations (IOs) and local women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to explain this disparity. It finds that officers are more likely to refer rape cases to court because they perceive rape as an offense that is above the jurisdiction of the police and because the WACPS enforces a non-withdrawal policy for rape cases. This perception is a product of training provided by state and non-state actors; the stature of the crime in the penal law; and the WACPS’ policies. This study also finds that when these two conditions do not exist, officers sometimes forward cases to court based on their judgments of the victim and of the effects of the crime on the victim. It argues that the state, IOs, and NGOs have prioritized sexual violence and emphasized the prosecution of sexual offenders through legal and policy changes, institution building, and awareness-raising, to the relative neglect of other forms of GBV. This disparity has contributed to the variation in how officers respond to GBV.

The original aim of this review was to collect and synthesize prevalence data. However, as will be discussed, in reviewing the literature it is evident that the current definitions and methods used to measure sex trafficking and sexual exploitation are too heterogeneous to synthesize in a meta-analysis. Instead, this review aims to inform future policy, research and programming responses to sexual exploitation and sex trafficking in conflict-affected settings by reviewing the types of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation measured in conflict-affected settings and present the varied terminology use, and discuss the dynamics of these different violence exposures through reviewing prevalence indicators and health outcomes.

Disaffected, impoverished, and displaced people in weak and failing states are particularly vulnerable. Human trafficking exploits social and political turmoil caused by natural disasters, economic crisis, and armed conflict. The exploitation and forced servitude of millions of trafficking victims take many forms. Women and children are trafficked into becoming child soldiers and concubines of illegal armed groups, men, women and children are trafficked into forced labor and sexual slavery, forced to sell drugs, steal, and beg money for the criminals controlling them, and thousands are coerced or forced into a growing black market trade in human body parts. The growth in illegal mining operations by illegal armed groups and organized crime is also fueling conditions of forced labor. Trafficking victims are dehumanized and suffer grave physical and mental illness and often die at the hands of their captors and exploiters. Colombia is particularly afflicted by the scourge of human trafficking. All the elements of modern-day slavery and human exploitation are present in this Latin American state that is struggling to overcome decades of internal armed conflict, social fragmentation, poverty, and the constant debilitating presence of organized crime and corruption. Women’s Link Worldwide recently reported that human trafficking is not viewed as an internal problem among Colombian officials, despite estimates that more than 70,000 people are trafficked within Colombia each year. This article examines human trafficking in its many forms in Colombia, the parties involved in trafficking, and the State’s response or lack of response to human trafficking. The article also presents innovations that might be effective for combating human trafficking, and proposes that Colombia can serve as an effective model for other countries to address this growing domestic and international human rights catastrophe.

The review found a great deal of work on the subject of conflict and its effects on women, children, and gender-based violence; the gender aspects of peacekeeping; and human trafficking in countries that once were in conflict. However, very few of these works deal directly with the issues of conflict, human trafficking, and their interrelationships; even fewer works contain in-depth descriptions and analyses of conditions present in conflict and post-conflict situations, which particularly contribute to the emergence of human trafficking in post-conflict and neighboring countries. The exception is the growing body of work on childsoldiers and women associated with the fighting forces (WAFF), recent works on human trafficking in women and girls for sexual exploitation in and around areas with peacekeeping missions, and the evolving links between post-conflict trafficking in persons and organized crime. From the literature review, most trafficking in post-conflict countries follows predictable patterns based on the country’s placement on the conflict spectrum. Immediately before and during conflict, human trafficking is primarily related to the recruitment and use of child soldiers and WAFF. At this stage, there is also human trafficking of refugees and displacedpersons, especially for sexual exploitation or labor. Immediately following conflict, most child soldiers and WAFF victims are released and try to reintegrate back into civilian society—usually through a disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation (DDR) program. With the influx of large numbers of peacekeepers, human trafficking shifts toward prostitution of women and girls. In the post-conflict period, the lack of law and order and the large numbers of vulnerable and destitute populations, especially female refugees, IDPs, separated children, and war widows, contribute toward the country becoming a source and a transit point for human trafficking for sexual exploitation or forced labor. In this post-conflict climate, women and girls suffer disproportionately from lack of access to resources and education, thereby heightening their vulnerability to various forms of exploitation and human trafficking. In search of opportunities to improve their social, economic, and political situations in more developed cities or countries, yet lacking comprehensive information or access to legitimate migration programs, many of these persons fall victim to human traffickers. This phenomenon occurs not only in the immediate post-conflict period, but often well after the conflict has subsided. In some areas, such as the former Soviet Union and the Balkans, literature links post-conflict trafficking with organized and transnational crime. A few of the reviewed works also examine the role wealthier countries play as sources of demand and destination of trafficked persons.

Human trafficking is an effective tool that serves several purposes for terrorist organizations. It facilitates the recruitment and retention of male foreign fighters and provides a reward mechanism for successful combatants.It also generates revenue and contributes to psychologically crushing “the enemy,” by “decimat[ing] communities”.Trafficking, as a tactic of warfare, “intimidates populations and reduces resistance just as enslavement and rape of women.”While it is well-understood that ISIS’s kidnapping and enslavement of Yazidi women and other female prisoners constitutes human trafficking, less attention has been paid to the prospect that some of ISIS’s female recruits from the West, who average 18 years of age 5, may also be considered victims of entrapment and trafficking because of the techniques used to lure these young women and how they are exploited upon arrival in ISIS-held territory.

Women and girls account for 71 per cent – that is, nearly 29 million – of all victims of modern slavery globally. The gendered nature of modern slavery becomes even more apparent when examining the different forms in which it manifests. Women and girls are overrepresented in three out of the four types of modern slavery assessed by the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: they make up 58 per cent of all victims of forced labour, 84 per cent of all victims of forced marriage, and a staggering 99 per cent of all victims of forced sexual exploitation. In fact, women and girls are overwhelmingly at risk of sexual exploitation regardless of the form of modern slavery they are subjected to. These findings reflect highly gendered patterns of employment and migration and point to the relevance of broader patterns of human rights abuses that disproportionately affect women and girls.

The project, "Enhancing counter trafficking in crisis in the Western Balkans" aims to enhance counter-trafficking efforts through strengthening the capacities and mechanisms for victim identification and to raise awareness of TIP risk factors among vulnerable migrant populations, specifically within the mixed migration flows transiting the region and during crisis. In light of the increased numbers of vulnerable irregular migrants stranded and transiting through countries in the region, every goverment's capacity to identify and refer VOTs and PVOTs requires further adaptation to the current situation. They need to take into account any new modus operandi of traffickers, victim profules, as well as new forms of trafficking that have begun to emerge. This Analytical Report intends to capture concrete TIP-related information, including TIP risk factors, trends and vulnerabilities within the mixed migration flows in the Western Balkan region.

The areas where armed conflicts take place and have been perpetrated by state or non-state actors involved in conflicts represent a suitable place for emergence of phenomenon of human trafficking. The exploitation of victims of trafficking in human beings in the context of armed conflicts can take various forms, so that for the purposes of our research, this category of victims will be classified into two groups: victims of armed activities and victims of non-armed activities. Hence, the first group includes victims that take direct participation in armed combat activities or other activities during combat operations such as minefield cleaning, transport and medical services, etc. The second group includes victims of sexual exploitation in the conflict area and their forms, forced labour in different sectors and trafficking in organs.

Objectives: Evidence showed that the prevalence of sexual violence during the whole human trafficking period was high. However, the distribution of sexual violence along the stages of the trafficking cycle is unclear. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of sexual violence at each stage of trafficking and factors associated with it among Ethiopian trafficked females. Design: A retrospective cohort study was conducted to study trafficking returnees regarding their previous experiences at each stage of trafficking. Settings: Data were collected at immigration offices in three border towns of Ethiopia located bordering Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti. Participants: Six hundred and seventy-one women who were trafficked from Ethiopia were recruited into the study consecutively. They were recruited when they came back home via the three border towns either by deportation or voluntary return. Outcome measure: The outcome variable was sexual violence.

Background: Human trafficking was affecting a number of individuals in Ethiopia that resulted in various health problems and human right violations. Though the pushing and pulling factors of human trafficking were identified qualitatively, their effect on trafficking status were not measured quantitatively; the magnitude of human trafficking among returnees was not also quantified. Methods: Primary data were collected from 1342 Ethiopian returning migrants from abroad via Metemma-Yohannes, Moyale, and Galafi border towns from May to October 2016 consecutively. The status of each returnee as trafficked or non-trafficked was determined based on the UN 2000 definition of human trafficking. Factor analyses were conducted on the push and pull factors of migration to identify the underlying constructs. Considering the common underlying concept of items that load on the push and pull factors, the newly emerged construct variables were named in consultation with sociologists before used as independent variables. Finally, the effect of these and other variables on trafficking status were measured using generalized estimation equation.