The current refugee “crisis” in Europe has created multiple forms of vulnerability and insecurity for refugee women including various forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Increasing numbers of women, either alone or with family, are attempting to reach Europe to seek protection from conflict and violence in their countries, but these women are subject to violence during their journey and/or on arrival in a destination country. The lack of adequate accommodation or reception facilities for refugees and migrants in Europe, as well as the closure of borders which has increased the need for smugglers to help them reach Europe, acts to exacerbate the violence and insecurity.

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.

Child trafficking, under the guise of intercountry adoption, is a form of human trafficking that is often misunderstood by policy makers, governments, the media, and nongovernmental organizations. The aim of this analysis is to bring awareness and attention to child trafficking disguised as inter-country adoption, to provide an analysis of current policies that address human trafficking and inter-country adoption, and to suggest that in order to support more ethical child welfare practices, social workers and NASW, in particular, should take a more aggressive role in the development of sound approaches to international child welfare and the protection of children, especially during humani-tarian emergencies. We use the 2010 abduction attempt of Haitian children by American missionaries as a case to demonstrate how existing policies are insufficient to provide protection to victims and to prosecute perpetrators of this form of child trafficking. We conduct an analysis of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and provide an application of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000.

At the best of times, there are immense challenges in meeting the public health and healthcare and social care needs of migrant, ethnic, racial and other minority groups in modern societies globally. Over 50 years, scholars, researchers and practitioners have developed principles and exemplars of how to provide culturally competent and effective services for diverse societies. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are in the worst of times, and new thinking is required. We are already seeing the desperate plight of migrants, particularly those in camps and detention centres awaiting their asylum claims to be examined. Millions of people are on the march in countries such as India in scenes not seen since the partition of the country in 1947, when millions died. There is, however, a group of migrants, i.e., those labelled undocumented or irregular, or in a derogatory and inaccurate way illegal, at even greater need than other populations. The numbers and whereabouts of undocumented migrants are unknown, at least to the statutory sector, for self-evident reasons. The immigration authorities and the public usually judge the numbers to be substantial, for example, with estimates in the hundreds of thousands in the UK. They have no legal rights to residence in the country they are in. They live in the shadows of society, fearful of authority, and with little access to services, which are mostly provided by the voluntary sector. Nonetheless, they contribute to the functioning of society usually through low-paid work in difficult settings. There are probably tens of millions of such people across the world. They are in danger of becoming the scapegoats, when they are going to be the foremost victims of the pandemic.

The links between technology and anti-trafficking—the focus of this Special Issue of Anti-Trafficking Review—and COVID-19 may seem topically distant and their analytical connections not readily apparent. However, by situating COVID-19 as an analytical launch pad into the Special Issue, our aim is to spark creative interdisciplinary approaches in tracking how distinctive global phenomena constitutively overlap in moments of social and economic disruption. And, more pointedly, we hope to better understand how issues framed as exceptional give rise to solutions, including state and non-governmental solutions augmented by technology, which may further contribute to structural vulnerabilities.

The Rohingya people of Myanmar (known as Burma before 1989) were stripped of citizenship in 1982, because they could not meet the requirement of proving their forefathers settled in Burma before 1823, and now account for one in seven of the global population of stateless people. Of the total 1·5 million Rohingya people living in Myanmar and across southeast Asia, only 82 000 have any legal protection obtained through UN-designated refugee status. Since 2012, more than 159 000 people, most of whom are Rohingya, have fled Myanmar in poorly constructed boats for journeys lasting several weeks to neighbouring nations, causing hundreds of deaths. We outline historical events preceding this complex emergency in health and human rights. The Rohingya people face a cycle of poor infant and child health, malnutrition, waterborne illness, and lack of obstetric care. In December, 2014, a UN resolution called for an end to the crisis. We discuss the Myanmar Government's ongoing treatment of Rohingya through the lens of international law, and the steps that the newly elected parliament must pursue for a durable solution.

The purpose of this text is to comprehensively present the issue of human trafficking to the reader. While it is intended for upper level undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of disciplines, professionals working in any number of fields including law enforcement, human services or health care will find it informative and useful as well. In addition, the book is a “must read” for concerned citizens interested in human rights and how to make a difference in their communities.The book is divided into three sections, each of which addresses different aspects of human trafficking. The two chapters in the first section provide an overview of the issue and contextualize it within a human rights and historical framework. The second section comprises five chapters and provides the reader with more detailed information about trafficking from a variety of academic disciplines. The third section focuses on the antitraficking movement and addresses international responses to the problem as well as considerations for working with victims. Also in the final section is a chapter written from the perspective of a former agent with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is geared toward training law enforcement. Finally, the text closes with a chapter about how trafficking is being addressed and how individuals, larger social groups, and organizations can get involved in putting an end to the crime and to helping survivors.

Despite the often noted negative connection between natural disasters and human trafficking, no quantitative study has been performed. Natural disasters, like conflict, can destroy homes and the economic security of individuals forcing them to migrate and making them targets for traffickers. This article tests the link between a state’s ability to address trafficking and natural disasters, testing the popular prediction that a state’s capabilities will be strained as increased natural disasters occur thus producing a negative effect. The findings though demonstrate that states are actually more likely to perform better in their efforts to confront trafficking. I argue that this is because natural disasters actually strengthen and enhance the state, and particularly its security institutions, in responding to these events. I place these findings in the context of other recent quantitative studies of trafficking that have also produced contradictory results when compared with the field’s qualitative studies.

Migrant workers often experience precarity in their migration journeys, and the state structures and programs designed to ‘protect’ migrants have the potential to increase migrant vulnerability to exploitation; financial exploitation, enduring physical harm, rights abuses or various forms of coercion. The increased use of managed migration programs to control migrant flows have introduced a thriving private sector migration industry which facilitates the employment and migration needs of migrants in sending countries, and caters to government and industry (employer) requirements in receiving countries. Migrant workers can be subject to economic exploitation and even violence at the hands of private intermediaries, employers and government authorities. This vulnerability is exacerbated by migrants’ limited access to information and support networks in countries of destination and insufficient levels of social protection and gaps in the governance frameworks in countries of origin.In addition to these common risks, women migrant workers (WMWs) face gendered and specific forms of exploitation and human rights abuses associated with gender norms and stereotypes. Their labour is highly concentrated in devalued, gendered and often invisible labour sectors that are plagued by labour abuse (including excess hours and poor pay), physical and psychological abuse and sexual violence.

The coronavirus is not only claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, but is also causing a global economic crisis that is expected to rival or exceed that of any recession in the past 150 years. Although decisive action and containment measures are helping flatten the curve of infection, such measures inevitably deepen and lengthen the economic recession.In the worst-case scenario, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that up to 25 million people will lose their jobs worldwide.Poverty, lack of social or economic opportunity and limited labour protections are the main root causes and drivers that render people vulnerable or cause them to fall victim to human trafficking. This unprecedented crisis will likely exacerbate all of those factors and result in developments that must be noted by antihuman-trafficking communities and stakeholders.