This analysis is based on IOM’s caseload and excludes the hundreds of victims identified and assisted by other partners in Cox’s Bazar. Therefore, the trends described were compiled from Rohingya who were directly assisted by IOM. The trends provide some insight to the current trafficking context affecting the Rohingya but do not indicate the prevalence of human trafficking in the district. Human trafficking is a crime that is often underreported for many reasons including but not limited to lack of general awareness on the complex dynamics of human trafficking, the services available for victims, the verbal, physical and psychological coercive tactics used by the trafficking network, and stigma and discrimination against victims.

Current anti-trafficking debates are driven by emotionally expressed concerns and answered with rational argumentations about policy impacts in an environment of limited data availability and quality. Claims of a huge and increasing size of the phenomenon often remain undisputed in such debates. This is exemplified with a scene from the German election campaign. In such a situation, data presentation policies are of high importance. Two policies can be observed: a disclaimer policy, focusing on the deficiencies of the data, and an exaggeration policy, overstating trafficking data. The presentation of Eurostat trafficking data exemplifies this observation. While the report presents detailed data and includes a disclaimer indicating data limitations, the press release creates an impression of urgency. It refers to the omnipresence of trafficking, alarming trends and a predominance of women and children among the victims. These notions cannot be supported by the presented data. The combination of a disclaimer and exaggeration presentation policy is problematic, as it may encourage calls for simplistic policies that leave many victims of extreme exploitation and trafficking without support. This policy brief recommends a data presentation policy that makes the best possible statements on the basis of available data and qualitative knowledge, using comparative observations within data sets and beyond. Such a data presentation strategy increases the chances that policymakers learn from the past and implement policies for the benefit of victims of extreme forms of exploitation

Violence in Syria has been driving children, women and men from their homes for almost five years. ICMPD’s new research study looks at the vulnerability of displaced Syrian people to trafficking in persons. The research found that people are often trafficked or exploited because they are not able to meet their basic needs. This is exacerbated by complications in relation to legal residence status in host countries and legal authorisation to work. While some trafficking is committed by highly organised criminal networks, the most common type of exploitation is at a lower level, involving fathers, mothers, husbands, extended family, acquaintances and neighbours. The context of general vulnerability means that there are often factors that leave families with no viable alternative for survival other than situations that could be defined as exploitation and trafficking in national and international law. We therefore need a paradigm shift in how trafficking, refugee, migration and child protection policy are viewed in terms of access to protection. While policy-makers and practitioners might see themselves as working in distinct fields, on specific topics, the human beings in need of protection do not always fall under one single, clear-cut category. We must concentrate efforts to provide access to basic needs and safety for people displaced from and within Syria.

Labour inspectorates and other inspecting authorities with a mandate to monitor labour and employment standards (e.g. the financial police) have emerged as possible actors that can contribute to national efforts to combat trafficking. Today these authorities are expected to play a key role in tackling trafficking for labour exploitation (see, e.g., GRETA 2016) and in fact, in many countries, they have become involved in anti-trafficking efforts to implement international obligations. This policy brief summarises key findings of research conducted within the DemandAT project that examined the role of selected authorities mandated to monitor labour and employment standards in addressing trafficking in five EU Member States.

In the last decades, considerable efforts have been made to eradicate trafficking in human beings. In this context, the role of demand has gained prominence in public and political debates. Activists had lobbied for a reference to demand in the UN Anti-Trafficking Protocol, mainly with the aim to criminalise ‘the demand’ or purchase of sexual services. What was eventually agreed upon was something different and above all vague. Indeed, the Protocol asks signatory states to ‘discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking’, as do the 2005 Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings and the 2011 EU Anti-Trafficking Directive (2011/36/EU). This demand-clause triggered a search for meaningful interpretations in a range of fields. The project DemandAT had the task of mapping what was understood as demand-side measures, to suggest a consistent conceptual and theoretical framework for the analysis of demand-side and alternative policies, and to contribute to a better understanding of the working of selected ‘demand-side’ measures. This policy brief summarises main research results and formulates recommendations for European and national policy makers.

The Strength to Carry On: Resilience and Vulnerability to Trafficking among People Travelling along Migration Routes to Europe analyses the incidence of human trafficking among people travelling along migration routes to Europe; factors of resilience to trafficking and other abuses; and factors of vulnerability to trafficking and other abuses. The study covers the Eastern Mediterranean, Balkan and Central Mediterranean migration routes.The research findings indicate the significance of the context of the migration routes for people’s experiences: the geography of the routes; and the policies and practices applied during different periods in different places. Due to the lack of legal channels for migrating and seeking asylum, and the lack of possibilities to transit regularly along the routes, almost everyone who travels the routes uses migrant smuggling services, at least at some point. Migration policies and responses to the situation on the migration routes have focused largely on combating irregular movement and are characterised by border restrictions and fortification, which significantly increases the vulnerabilities of people using the routes. 69 potential trafficking cases were identified in the course of the research, and 14 cases of deprivation of liberty for extortion. A minority of these cases were officially identified by the authorities. People on the move are trafficked for sexual exploitation, labour exploitation and forced migrant smuggling. The study also shows that deprivation of liberty for extortion involves the abuse of a person’s rights in order to obtain financial or material benefits. The main modus operandi of traffickers in the context of the migration routes, regardless of whether or not they also provide migrant smuggling services, is abusing people’s position of vulnerability. This vulnerability arises from their need to use, and to pay for, migrant smuggling, due to the lack of alternatives for regular travel.

This factsheet is intended as a quick reference tool to support National Societies to consider how the Covid-19 global pandemic may place communities at increased risk of trafficking, how it may impact trafficked persons and provide advice on practical actions that can be taken to respond and mitigate risks.

Given the significant global burden of human trafficking, the ability of clinicians to identify and provide treatment for trafficked persons is critical. Particularly in conflict settings, health care facilities often serve as the first and sometimes only point of contact for trafficked persons. As such, medical practitioners have a unique opportunity and an ethical imperative to intervene, even in nonclinical roles. With proper training, medical practitioners can assist trafficked persons by documenting human trafficking cases, thereby placing pressure on key stakeholders to enforce legal protections, and by providing adequate services to those trafficked.

While the effect of humanitarian intervention on the recurrence and intensity of armed conflict in a crisis zone has received significant scholarly attention, there has been comparatively less work on the negative externalities of introducing peacekeeping forces into conflict regions. This article demonstrates that large foreign forces create one such externality, namely a previously non-existent demand for human trafficking. Using Kosovo, Haiti, and Sierra Leone as case studies, we suggest that the injection of comparatively wealthy soldiers incentivizes the creation of criminal networks by illicit actors. We theorize further that the magnitude of increase in trafficking should be directly proportional to the size of the foreign force, with larger forces producing larger increases. We find that both hypotheses hold with varying levels of confidence across our three case studies. Despite the benevolent intent of peacekeeping missions, the possibility that they may contribute to human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation runs counter to the spirit of such interventions. This is especially problematic given that trafficking rings, once established, may be adapted to provide weapons and narcotics, thereby planting the seed of further destabilization.

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.