Briefing Papers: “Towards Greater accountability - Participatory Monitoring of Anti-Trafficking Initiatives”
The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) believes that the impact of anti-trafficking initiatives is best understood from the perspective of trafficked persons themselves. In 2013, 17 GAATW member organisations across Latin America, Europe, and Asia undertook a participatory research project to look at their own assistance work from the perspective of trafficked persons. GAATW members interviewed 121 women, men and girls who lived through trafficking to find out about their experience of assistance interventions and their recovery process after trafficking. The project aimed to make the assistance programmes more responsive to the needs of the clients and to initiate a process of accountability on the part of all anti-trafficking organisations and institutions.
These briefing papers highlight the main findings of what people who have been trafficked say about 3 important themes:
- Unmet Needs: Emotional support and care after trafficking [English, Spanish]
- Rebuilding Lives: The need for sustainable livelihoods after trafficking [English, Spanish]
- Seeking Feedback from Trafficked Persons on Assistance Services: Principles and ethics [English, Spanish]
With translation support from Translators without Borders.
Regional Report: “Towards Greater Accountability - Participatory Monitoring of Anti-Trafficking Initiatives”
The project of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), "Towards greater accountability - Participatory Monitoring of Anti-Trafficking Initiatives”, aims to reaffirm the right of surviving victims to express their voices, by monitoring initiatives that are intended to benefit them.
The research study aimed to identify victims’ perceptions and views of the support services they received, which would be reflected in the respective country reports. The participant organisations in the research had provided some form of assistance to surviving victims that had participated in the study. Seven of the organisations that participated in the research are from Latin America and the Caribbean: The Civil Human Rights Association of United Women Migrants and Refugees in Argentina (AMUMRA) of Argentina; Renacer, Hope Foundation and Space Corporation Foundation Women of Colombia; Ecuador Hope Foundation; Street Brigade Support Women "Elisa Martinez", AC of Mexico and Alternative Forms of Human and Social Capital (CHS Alternativo) of Peru.
AU PAIR: Challenges to safe migration and decent work
In GAATW’s 2010 Working Paper Series Beyond Borders, links between trafficking and migration, labour, gender and security are explored and developed conceptually. This working paper seeks to build on the earlier work by developing a practical understanding of safe migration, with specific reference to a case study on au pair migration.
The scope for this research focus on Filipina au pairs in three European countries: Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, which are the top receivers of au pair migrants from the Philippines. This working paper provides an overview of the existing policies on au pair migration in these three countries and also includes a case study of the situations and experiences of Filipina au pairs in one country of destination: Denmark.
This paper includes three separate sections of analysis which are summed up in a chapter on recommendations at the end. The first section gives an introduction to safe migration, in particular, to its challenges, and considers how concepts related to safe migration can be linked to au pair migration. The second section presents existing policies and regulations of the country of origin (the Philippines) and the destination countries (Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands). The third section presents the findings of a case study of Filipina au pairs in Denmark. The final section of the report seeks to address the challenges identified in the analysis by setting out a range of recommendations to be considered by policy makers.
A Toolkit for Reporting to CEDAW on Trafficking in Women and Exploitation of Migrant Women Workers
This toolkit provides guidance to NGOs engaging in the CEDAW review process. It hopes to enable NGO reporting to provide more thorough information on the situation of trafficking in women and the exploitation of women migrant workers and to link these areas of concern with migration, labour and discrimination issues. It also provides lobbying tools for NGOs to facilitate effective advocacy to the Committee on these issues, in order that the Committee is better equipped to address trafficking and the exploitation of migrant women workers with states under review. Download the toolkit
Moving Beyond ‘Supply and Demand’ Catchphrases: Assessing the uses and limitations of demand-based approaches in Anti-Trafficking
The need to reduce ‘demand’ for trafficked persons is widely mentioned in the anti-trafficking sector but few have looked at ‘demand’ critically or substantively. Some ‘demand’-based approaches have been heavily critiqued, such as the idea that eliminating sex workers’ clients (or the ‘demand’ for commercial sex) through incarceration or stigmatisation will reduce trafficking. In this publication, we take a look at the links between trafficking and: (1) the demand for commercial sex, and (2) the demand for exploitative labour practices. We assess current approaches used to reduce each of these types of ‘demand’ and consider other long-term approaches that can reduce the demand for exploitative practices while respecting workers’ and migrants’ rights (e.g. enforcing labour standards, reducing discrimination against migrants, supporting sex workers’ rights).
What's the Cost of a Rumour? A guide to sorting out the myths and the facts about sporting events and trafficking
There has been a lot published on the supposed link between sporting events and trafficking, but how much of it is true and how much of it is useful? In this guide, we review the literature from past sporting events, and find that they do not cause increases in trafficking for prostitution. The guide takes a closer look at why this unsubstantiated idea still captures the imagination of politicians and some media, and offers stakeholders a more constructive approach to address trafficking beyond short-term events. We hope this guide will help stakeholders quickly correct misinformation about trafficking, develop evidence-based anti-trafficking responses, and learn what worked and what didn't in past host cities.
Smuggling and Trafficking: Rights and Intersections
GAATW Working Paper Series
GAATW is increasingly concerned with immigration measures that criminalise migrants and badly affect trafficked people. Many of these policies are framed as ‘anti-smuggling’ measures. We chose to look at smuggling partly because the Smuggling Protocol sits in the same UN convention as the Trafficking Protocol and receives much less attention, especially in terms of human rights.
GAATW members also struggle with smuggling in terms of misidentification. When authorities detain migrants, they do not always screen whether they might have been trafficked, but detain them as criminals, as ‘smuggled’, or as ‘irregular’ and then deport them before they have a chance to seek or receive entitled rights. If people labelled as ‘smuggled’ are not getting their rights, it follows that some non-identified trafficked people are not either. We feel that we cannot ignore the anti-smuggling measures that are affecting the people with whom we work.
This paper examines three topics:
- Human rights that migrants have in smuggling situations,
- Intersections between smuggling and trafficking, and
- Language that different stakeholders use to talk about smuggling.
Click the links below to download:
Issue Papers - Reflections of Immigrant Women who Suffered Human Trafficking
| Title: |
Reflexiones de mujeres inmigrantes que han sufrido la Trata de personas (Reflections of immigrant women who suffered human trafficking) |
| Author: | |
| Organisation:aa | |
| Language: | Spanish |
| About the Issue Paper |
When reflecting about trafficking, trafficked women analysis goes beyond their traumatic experiences to their strategies to cope, face and overcome trafficking. They are able to reflect and shed light on what does not work in the assistance methodologies and about their assigned role as passive victims. In this issue paper, the author presents the thoughts and experiences of trafficked women who participated in a Feminist Participatory Action Research she coordinated between 2007 and 2010. The research took place in the Philippines, the United States, Colombia and Spain and involved women from 13 countries who had been trafficked for prostitution, organ harvesting, forced marriage, begging, domestic exploitation, labor exploitation and slavery-like practices. Through this issue paper trafficked women reflect about their role as victims, and about concepts such as agency vulnerability, resilience and coping strategies, and their evolving identities beyond their trafficking experience. |
Click here to know more about The 'Border Woman' Project |