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Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

GAATW Logo

Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

Statement on international governance delivered at the Informal Interactive Hearings on International Migration and Development on 15 July 2013

Action theme 4: Migration governance and partnerships
Intervention delivered by Kate Sheill, International Advocacy Officer, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women 

Thank you Mr/Madame Moderator

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women is an international network of over 100 independent NGOs. We locate trafficking in the context of labour migration and see a rights-based approach to migration, safe migration and migrants’ rights, including worker rights, as the best hope of ending and preventing trafficking in persons.

The international human rights framework needs to be the primary framework for the intergovernmental governance of migration. There is still resistance to and lack of knowledge that migrants, including irregular migrants, have (with just two exceptions) the same rights as citizens. It is through the human rights framework that we can address violations of migrants’ rights and ensure access to justice.

Human rights-based labour standards, improved working conditions, and allowing workers to organise across all sectors, irrespective of their migrant status, will reduce opportunities for the exploitation of labour, including migrant labour. But these labour laws and protections must apply to all forms of work, including those often not covered, such as in the informal sector and sectors dominated by women workers.

Migration is a key factor in the development of countries of origin and destination – and development needs to be rights-based. The UN High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) clearly places poverty eradication and development within the context of human rights.


Human rights are the common thread between all of the international cooperation frameworks we work with in our work on migration – including refugees, labour standards, trafficking in persons, women’s rights, and child rights.

  • We need a space for dialogue and exchange to ensure coherence on migration and human rights across these frameworks. The UN is that space.
  • There have been many advances toward ensuring that migrants, migrant workers and their families, can live with the equal dignity and respect to which all persons are entitled. We need a body mandated to track – and ensure coherence between and follow up on – these developments in migrants rights, such as those by the UN treaty bodies and special procedures.
  • At the very least, or as a starting point, the mandate of the Global Migration Group needs to be expanded to take on more than information sharing and given more of a leadership role. It needs to be focused on and guided by the international human rights framework.
  • Indeed, we need for human rights to be central to the mandate of all the intergovernmental bodies and experts involved in the international governance of migration.

Participation is a fundamental principle of human rights and must be central to the rights-based approach to migration. Civil society must be able to access and participate in the intergovernmental spaces of migration governance – and it has been good to hear affirmation of that from several States today. However, too often migrants are absent from the discussion on their rights. We need to do more to achieve the genuine participation of migrants, regardless of status, in migration policy development and implementation. 

To conclude, we call on States to use the occasion of the second High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development to reaffirm the centrality of international human rights law as the primary framework for the intergovernmental governance of migration and civil society’s – and migrants’ – essential participation in that work.

Thank you.

Written statement for the Informal Interactive Hearings on International Migration and Development (15 July 2013)

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) is a network of more than 100 non-governmental organisations from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. We have been researching human trafficking and learning from trafficking survivors for nearly twenty years. GAATW promotes rights of women migrant workers and trafficked persons and believes that ensuring safe migration and fair work places should be at the core of all anti-trafficking efforts.

Human trafficking occurs in the context of labour migration. The majority of trafficked persons are migrant workers in the informal, unorganised and unprotected sectors.

The risk of exploitation or violence neither deters migrants nor should be used to prevent migration. Instead, States need to learn from migrants’ experiences to improve provisions for safe migration that benefits the migrant worker, their families and communities, and the State, as remittances contribute to the GDP of countries of origin. As the UN Secretary-General has stated, for women migrants “[i]nternational migration can be an empowering experience for women: women may leave situations where they have limited options for ones where they exercise greater autonomy over their own lives, thereby benefiting themselves as well as their families and communities.”[1]         

Instead, we often see States wrongly criminalising or otherwise clamping down on irregular migration, often in the name of preventing trafficking in persons. This is often at odds with a demand within their country for migrant labour that will, when combined with a lack of regular migration opportunities, push migrant workers into taking more dangerous routes, paying disproportionately high fees that may leave them in a situation of debt bondage, entering into work sites without good training, and will often leave them with nowhere to turn to if they face exploitation and abuse.

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GAATW Statements in PDF


Human Rights Council - Twenty-third session, Agenda item 3 (17 May 2013), Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights,  including the right to development
Written statement submitted by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women to the Human Rights Council 23 Session on the need for a critical approach to ‘demand’ discourses in work to end human trafficking
http://www.gaatw.org/statements/GAATWStatement_05.2013.pdf

 


Statement by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women to the High-Level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on the Appraisal of the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons (13-14 May 2013) - Delivered by Avaloy Lanning of Safe Horizons, a GAATW Member Organisation
http://www.gaatw.org/statements/GAATW_statement_for_the_HLM_GPA.2013.pdf


Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
21st session (23-27 April 2012)
Agenda item 5(a): Ratification and implementation of the UNTOC and the Protocols thereto
Statement delivered by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) on the Review Mechanism
http://www.gaatw.org/statements/GAATW_statement_on_the_Review_Mechanism.pdf


Human Rights Council
Twentieth session, Agenda item 3 (June 2012)
Written statement submitted by the Global Alliance against Traffic in Women - Reducing the risk of human trafficking by increasing the opportunities for safe migration
http://www.gaatw.org/statements/UNHRC_20Session_ReducingtheRiskofTrafficking.pdf

 


 

Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto Sixth session (15-19 October 2012)

Agenda item 2(b): Review of the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols thereto: Trafficking in Persons Protocol

17 October 2012

Thank you Madame Chair,

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, the World Society of Victimology, the International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care, the Academic Council on the United Nations Systemand the Vienna Alliance of NGOs welcome this opportunity to discuss the implementation of the UNProtocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

States do not and cannot work alone to end human trafficking, a situation that was recognised by the negotiators of the UN Trafficking Protocol. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other elements of civil society are named as actors in the Protocol.[1] As a recognised part of the anti-trafficking response,these non-State actors – whose roles range from direct service providers for survivors of traffickingto facilitators of multi-stakeholder initiatives– must also be meaningfully included in the process to review the implementation of the Protocol. This is not about“naming and shaming” States. This is about accountability. Accountability of all the actors named in the Trafficking Protocol and of all actors who are in receipt of funds to deliver benefits to survivors of trafficking. This is a call to ensure we have the opportunity to identify good practices and challenges from whichever stakeholder they come from. This is about improving the efficacy of anti-trafficking initiatives.

The need for international cooperation in fulfilling our collective duties has been recognised by States. We respectfully remindStates that at the 19th session of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Vienna in May 2010 they adopted a resolution that made explicit the vital role of civil society in “effectively countering the threat of trafficking in persons”:

Recognizing also that broad international cooperation between Member States and relevant intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations is essential for effectively countering the threat of trafficking in persons and other contemporary forms of slavery,[2]

This confirmation was reiterated in the same year, at the 12th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, held in Salvador, Brazil.[3] The Salvador Declaration clearly recognises the importance of civil society participation in crime prevention efforts and specifically, in the work to end human trafficking.[4] In particular:

Paragraph 33. We recognize that the development and adoption of crime prevention policies and their monitoring and evaluation are the responsibility of States. We believe that such efforts should be based on a participatory, collaborative and integrated approach that includes all relevant stakeholders including those from civil society.

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Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto, Sixth session (15-19 October 2012)

Agenda item 1(f): General discussion

16 October 2012

Mr President,

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women and the Vienna Alliance of NGOs welcome the opportunity to discuss the implementation of the UNConvention against Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocols.

Transnational organized crime is complex and requires complex strategies in response. There is no one answer. We require comprehensive, multi-sectoral, evidence-based approaches. To find effective solutions, we need to collaborate – to share both successes and challenges, technical assistance needs and good practices. We need to talk and listen to, and learn from, each other.

There is still much that we do not know. Data is urgently needed on the impact of the implementation of UNTOC and its Protocols on the people they are intended to benefit. Moreover, research has shown that some of these efforts have impacts, not always positive, on many others who are not part of these target communities.

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