Although African countries face challenges in effectively responding to all forms of modern slavery, many countries in the region are taking steps to strengthen their responses. Improvements in the legislative framework have occurred across the region with some notable examples. Cote d'Ivoire, Morocco, and Tunisia enacted comprehensive trafficking legislation in 2016- a new development since the 2016 Global Slavery Index. As a result, in 2017, nearly 70 percent of African countries had criminalised human trafficking, an increase from the nearly 60 percent reported in the previous Global Slavery Index in 2016.

The Arab States are currently both the source and recipient of the largest numbers of refugees and internally displaced people globally. As the region experiences conflict and resulting displacement – and given its position at the junction of migratory paths for Afghans, Sudanese, and Somalis fleeing conflicts in their homelands – vulnerability to modern slavery in the Arab States has sharply increased. An estimated 5.7 million refugees originated in the region since mid-2016 and 12 million people were displaced internally in Middle Eastern countries.This displacement, accompanied by severe economic decline, widespread violence and psychological distress, collapse of essential public services in many districts, and weak labour laws has contributed towards the vulnerability of refugees, internally displaced persons, minority groups, and ordinary citizens to trafficking and exploitation.

The economic, geographic, and cultural diversity of Asia and the Pacific region is reflected in the varying prevalence and forms of modern slavery found across the region. In Asia and the Pacific, there are instances of debt bondage, including hereditary forms of bonded labour in South Asia, forced labour exists in migrant dominated sectors across the region, forced marriage persists, and state-imposed forced labour, while most commonly known to exist in North Korea, occurs in several countries within the region. The Asia and Pacific region is home to the two most populous countries in the world, India and China, as well as some of the least populous island nations, among them Tuvalu, Nauru and Palau.

While United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs) are generally considered to reduce the likelihood of civil war recurrence, attention in recent years has shifted to understanding the dynamics unique to post-Cold War peacekeeping, including the changing makeup and mandate of PKOs, and associated patterns of peacekeeper misconduct. While several studies of misconduct emphasize peacekeepers’ implication in sexual exploitation and abuse of host country citizens, this study goes the next step by assessing peacekeeping’s relationship to human trafficking more broadly—a perennial concern in post-conflict states. Though UN PKOs are not always directly responsible for increases in human trafficking in mission host countries, this paper considers how the attributes of UN peacekeeping missions may create the conditions where trafficking is likely to flourish or flounder.

This article addresses sex trafficking committed by the terrorist group Da’esh in the Syrian Arab Republic and its neighboring Republic of Iraq. It proposes primarily that sex trafficking perpetrated by Da’esh falls into at least two unique categories of trafficking — “combat trafficking” and “institutional trafficking” — that require markedly different legal responses in order to ensure accountability and justice. The article outlines the divergent factual patterns and characteristics of each form of trafficking, exploring how “combat trafficking” occurs through the active invasion of territory, whereby Da’esh forcibly captures women and girls and subjects them to sexual slavery, and how “institutional trafficking” occurs outside the active conflict, whereby Da’esh recruits women and girls to join the group and subjects them to forced marriage and domestic servitude. It discusses how institutional trafficking has been largely overlooked in discussions of accountability for Da'esh's trafficking crimes. This article then argues for accountability for institutional trafficking under the international system of Transnational Criminal Law (“TCL”). It delineates how the crime of trafficking has been interpreted and defined to date within this system and how that definition applies to Da’esh’s acts of institutional trafficking. It explains how TCL is best suited to addressing this form of trafficking. The article then argues that full accountability for perpetrators of this form of trafficking is two-fold, requiring recognition of the crime and enforcement of the criminalization of it.

Trafficking in human beings (THB), as a transnational crime, involves movement of people across borders. In this regard, border control authorities are expected to play an important role in preventing and curbing this phenomenon. Border guards are identified as key actors in fight against trafficking in human beings both in the new Directive 2011/36/EU and the associated EU Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings. The role of border guards in combating trafficking, is largely seen as in the role of “first responder” as part of the National Referral Mechanisms in identification of victims of trafficking, as well as for the identification and apprehension of traffickers within border control procedures. The growing commitment on the EU policy level for prevention of, and fighting against, trafficking of human beings, has also led to recognition of the issue as an important priority to border control authorities of all Member States as well. The European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (FRONTEX) has already recognised THB as one of its priorities and has developed a training manual for border guards related to THB and a handbook for Border Control Authorities on good practices to counter THB. This paper Human Trafficking, Border Security and Related Corruption in the EU, by Atanas Rusev of the Center for Study of Democracy in Bulgaria, investigates the much under-researched aspect of corruption and human trafficking. Rusev explores this topic vis-à -vis border authorities and connected corruption to facilitate, inter alia, THB and how this corruption can be related to the corporate sector and enter into the highest political spheres

Human trafficking is a form of serious exploitation and abuse that is increasingly present in the UN peacekeeping environments. Trafficking exploits human beings for revenue through sex, forced labour and human organs. For peacekeeping (UN and other) there is a crisis of perception in relation to trafficking and the linked issue of sexual exploitation and abuse, which sees peacekeepers branded as more part of the problem than the solution, along with criticisms that the issue is not taken seriously by peacekeeping institutions. Allegations and incidences of peacekeeper involvement with trafficking run counter to UN principles. Such incidents can be extremely damaging to missions by undermining implementation of police reform and rule of law mandates, perpetuating linkages to organized crime and providing material for anti-UN elements, obstructionists and negative media campaigns.

The 2018 Global Slavery Index measures the extent of modern slavery country by country, and the steps governments are taking to respond to this issue, to objectively measure progress toward ending modern slavery. The Index draws together findings from across estimates of prevalence, measurement of vulnerability, and assessment of government responses, alongside an analysis of trade flows and data on specific products. When considered as a set, the data provide a complex and insightful picture of the ways modern slavery is impacting countries around the world. This enables us to refine our thinking on how to better respond to modern slavery, and also how to predict and prevent modern slavery in future.

While no government has a fully comprehensive response to modern slavery, all countries in the Americas region have either mantained or improved their response. Most notably, the United States has retained its position as demonstrating the strongest response to modern slavery in the region, and the strongest response globally to prevent governments and business from sourcing goods and services linked to modern slavery. The United States is joined by Argentina and Chile, both of wich have made improvements that result in the highest government response ratings in the Americas region of "BBB". Other countries that have improved their response to modern slavery this year include Peru, Uruguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama and Bolivia.

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.