The Blog

Labor abuse in the name of “cultural exchange,” courtesy of the J-1 visa program (again)

On March 6, 2013, student guestworkers from around the world held a surprise strike to expose severe exploitation at McDonald’s restaurants near Harrisburg, PA.  The students guestworkers, who came from Argentina, Peru, Chile, Malaysia, among other Asian and Latin American countries, each paid $3000 to participate in the U.S. State Department’s J-1 “cultural exchange” program.  They were expecting to come to the United States to experience cultural exchange and decent work that would at least let them earn back the fees. Instead, the student guestworkers experienced wage theft, sub-minimum wage pay, overpriced substandard housing, and intimidation and retaliation in response to their complaints.

Photo credit: National Guestworker Alliance

As this excellent report by Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute — entitled Guestworker Diplomacy — detailed, the J-1 Visa Program has deviated far from what it was originally intended to do: from a State Department program to facilitate exchanges of scientific and cultural knowledge to what is now the largest U.S. guestworker program.  J-1 visa holders from all over the world are now working in the United States as laborers on dairy farms, hotel maids, ride operators at amusement parks, and au pairs, among other semi- or unskilled occupations.  Employers have every incentive to employ J-1 workers instead of U.S. workers, or even other guest workers who hold H visas.  J-1 employers don’t have to pay prevailing wage, are exempt from Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment takes.  Nor do J-1 employers –unlike other guestworker employers — have to demonstrate that hiring the worker would not displace a U.S. worker.   And best of all, J-1 employers get a free pass from meaningful labor scrutiny.  The State Department has outsourced its oversight functions to the program sponsors (the companies that recruit the workers for the J-1 employers), who are expected to monitor themselves and report any regulatory violations back to a grossly understaffed compliance office at the State Department.

Try as it did with its post-Hershey reforms, the State Department has been unable to paper over the fundamental problem with the J-1 Program: it’s a labor program masquerading as cultural exchange.  And as the State Department Inspector General concluded a year ago — it probably ought to be moved to the Labor Department and subjected to the same standards and oversight as other U.S. guestworker programs.  Given the strength of the J-1 lobby, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon, however.

So what to do in the meantime?  Support the work of organizations like the National Guestworker Alliance, which organized the student walkouts at McDonalds and at Hershey’s.  And support passage of the Power Act to enable migrant workers to expose such abuses without fear of retaliation.

The Celebrification of Human Trafficking, Part 1 (in a Six Part Series)

Celebrities, people “known for [their] well-knownness,”[1] now regularly engage in and effect human trafficking policy and practice. As a result, celebrities are not only raising public awareness about the existence of these problems, but influencing people, policy objectives, and ameliorative schemes in the public and private sectors. While criticizing people purporting to help other people can sound like sour grapes, it is important to critique one-dimensional, oversimplified, appeal-to-the-masses (and -funders) approaches to human trafficking, especially when the persons engaging in it have such tremendous access to and influence over the public and political spheres. This six part blog, condensing a full discussion set forth in a forthcoming publication, looks at the ways in which certain celebrities have engaged with human trafficking, raising the question – is celebrity involvement a “good thing”?

The involvement of celebrities in human trafficking discourse obviously benefits some parties and aspects of the issue, otherwise celebrities would not be utilized as widely as they are, speak as loudly as they do, or dictate policy and response with such certitude. Celebrities are a benefit to policy makers––government entities, international organizations (IOs), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)––personally, in that policy makers get to rub elbows with celebrities, and professionally, in that constituents then view them as important for meriting the celebrity relationship. Celebrities also benefit from relationships with policy makers: they gain publicity and exposure for something other than entertainment value (although their entertainment value is also enhanced).

Some have argued that there are real advantages to celebrity human rights activism. For example, celebrities may have the potential to be more neutral than politicians or politically motivated NGOs,[2] and some celebrities use their celebrity to help activists gain access to policy makers and the public that they would otherwise never attain.[3] More ubiquitous are critics of celebrity involvement, especially when that involvement veers from mere endorsement into diplomacy and policy recommendation. The primary drawbacks to celebrity diplomacy and legislative involvement are the lack of accountability of celebrities and the unrefined, reductive (and, sometimes, uninformed) narratives that even the most well intentioned celebrities often present.

The reductive spin in turn dilutes the public’s willingness to intellectually engage and earnestly attend to the issues and to the people who are suffering.[4] Furthermore, it can detract from learning the solutions that those afflicted by human rights violations would propose for themselves. [5] In shifting the focus away from engagement with those most impacted, celebrity human rights activism risks rendering those people “victims” as opposed to “actors,”[6] and can shift realistic depictions of human rights issues away from the truly gruesome, complex, or boring, toward the more palatable, tangible, or exciting.[7]

While human trafficking is not unique in having attracted celebrity attention, it neatly fits into the type of issue to which celebrities are attracted. It is a sexy issue with visceral appeal; it is “of the moment”; [8] it can be reduced to a simplistic victim–rescuer narrative for those inclined to view it that way; its victims are often foreign and are, therefore, easily essentialized and othered. Furthermore, multiple and conflicting viewpoints exist on many aspects of human trafficking. For example, there are disagreements as to the extent of the problem, the precise definition of the problem, who is victimized, how best to support victims, and how to combat the problem. In addition, statistical data on human trafficking is wildly inconsistent because it lacks rigorous empirical support. Celebrities then lend their voices to this morass of disagreement and inconsistent data.

Celebrities can be especially desirable to those who would venture forth even where data is lacking. Whereas experts are inclined to qualify and question discrepant data,[9] celebrities may be more comfortable using unverified statistics and suggesting untested “solutions” so as not to muddle the visceral and emotional appeal of the issue.[10] There are no easy solutions to human trafficking. Experts often recommend large, expensive, and politically challenging approaches.[11] Celebrities, on the other hand, can be more willing to abridge experts’ detailed, ambitious, and costly proposals.[12] This is enticing to policy makers and the public, both of whom are interested in “doing something,” so long as that “something” is neither too complicated nor expensive. In sum, celebrity voices, conflicting expert opinions, and inconsistent data together induce susceptibility in audiences to a reductionist message about human trafficking. Choosing the path of least resistance, audiences then accept the reductionist narrative to “become aware,” and seek additional celebrity input to determine what should be done to combat human trafficking.

This concludes Part One of a six part series, the remainder of which will each detail the particular work of six celebrities currently engaged in activism addressing human trafficking.
________________________________________
[1] Neil Gabler, Toward a New Definition of Celebrity, THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER, http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/Gabler.pdf (last visited Aug. 11, 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing DANIEL J. BOORSTIN, THE IMAGE: A GUIDE TO PSEUDO-EVENTS IN AMERICA 57 (2d ed. 1992) (lamenting that people used to become famous for their greatness and accomplishments).
[2] Paul ‘t Hart & Karen Tindall, Leadership by the Famous: Celebrity As Political Capital, in DISPERSED DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP: ORIGINS, DYNAMICS, AND IMPLICATIONS 259, 271 (John Kane, Haig Patapan & Paul ‘t Hart eds., 2009) (“Where legislatures and other institutional watchdogs are sometimes fully co-opted by executive dominance, celebrity-led initiatives can help ‘keep the bastards honest.’”).
[3] David S. Meyer & Joshua Gamson, The Challenge of Cultural Elites: Celebrities and Social Movements, SOC. INQUIRY, May 1995, at 186-87.
It is important to notice not only that celebrities affect a framing shift within a movement action, but that their participation is driven toward an issue that will allow them an insider’s claim—that is, an issue that can be framed so that anyone and everyone can “speak out” from equal ground.
Id. at 199-200.
[4] See, e.g., Starstruck, supra note 5.
[5] Id. (“[C]elebrity-focused publicity tends to gloss over crucial facts and complexities . . . [a]nd the strong amplification that celebrity voices receive in the public discourse may crowd out the perspectives provided by other, less famous interlocutors.”); accord DAMBISA MOYO, DEAD AID: WHY AID IS NOT WORKING AND HOW THERE IS A BETTER WAY FOR AFRICA 26-27 (2009).
Scarcely does one see Africa’s (elected) officials or those African policymakers charged with the development portfolio offer an opinion on what should be done, or what might actually work to save the continent from its regression [because t]his very important responsibility has, for all intents and purposes, and to the bewilderment and chagrin of many an African, been left to musicians who reside outside Africa.
Id. at 27. But see Michael Gerson, Dambisa Moyo’s Wrongheaded ‘Dead Aid’, WASH. POST, Apr. 3, 2009, (critiquing Dambisa Moyo for oversimplifying the issues, getting her facts wrong, and being a “darling” of the right).
[6] See Andrew F. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy and the G8: Bono and Bob As Legitimate International Actors 12-13 (Ctr. for Int’l Governance Innovation, Working Paper No. 29, 2007), available at http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CEkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkms1.isn.ethz.ch%2Fserviceengine%2FFiles%2FISN%2F39553%2Fipublicationdocument_singledocument%2F09bba3df-bb5f-4650-9a4e-b23b8587dccd%2Fen%2FWP_29.pdf&ei=QAkHUPK4DoTw0gHltuWiCA&usg=AFQjCNGdvjB0lnCH0t6ajc99hWL1jt89sg&sig2=XUgOr9i3mSABze5hzGVyng [hereinafter Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy and the G8]. For example, in all of his concerts to “relieve hunger in Africa,” Bob Geldof had only one African performer. Id.; see infra note 60 and accompanying text.
[7] Cf. Hart & Tindall, supra note 9, at 171.
[Celebrity endorsement and activism] can exacerbate the pathology of politics as a popularity contest, which greatly disfavours social problems and groups that celebrities choose not to pay attention to or shy away from (unpopular, controversial, or unglamorous causes). In-depth analysis and careful deliberation may give way to star power, clever marketing, rock concerts and cleverly made but ultimately shallow docu-pics and blogs.
Id.
[8] See, e.g., Tracy Clark-Flory, The New Celebrity Cause: Sex Trafficking, SALON (Apr. 11, 2011, 1:53 PM), http://www.salon.com/2011/04/11/child_slavery/ (dubbing anti-child-sex-trafficking campaigns––as opposed to other types of human trafficking––“the hip new celebrity-endorsed cause”).
[9] See, e.g., Chuang, supra note 192, at 1707; Haynes, Eye of the Beholder, supra note 195.
[10] See, e.g., Statement of Ricky Martin, Enhancing the Global Fight to End Human Trafficking, supra note 97, at 6 (“[T]he facts . . . speak for themselves. Each year 2 million people are victims of human trafficking. Of those, 1 million children are forced into the sex trade each year.”); see supra notes 116-25 and accompanying text.
[11] See, e.g., Dina F. Haynes, Exploitation Nation: The Thin and Grey Legal Lines Between Trafficked Persons and Abused Migrant Laborers, 23 NOTRE DAME J.L. ETHICS & PUB. POL’Y 1, 55-71 (2009) [hereinafter Haynes, Exploitation Nation] (recommending tackling poverty, liberalizing immigration, and rethinking adherence to the free market).
[12] See, e.g., Statement of Ricky Martin, Enhancing the Global Fight to End Human Trafficking, supra note 97, at 11 (describing Martin’s foundation’s “Call and Live! Program” in response to Rep. Smith’s query about how Congress should respond to human trafficking).
[W]e created PSA’s [public service announcements] Call and Live. Well, it says it all. You call and you live. . . . People will call when they are being trafficked, when they believe they are being trafficked or when they witness a case, and that moment you will be safe.

“Where’s the Accountability?”

Visit the journal here.

Congratulations to Anne Gallagher, AO!

Congratulations to Dr. Anne Gallagher, who was recently honored for her pathbreaking work on human trafficking.  On June 11, 2012, Dr. Gallagher was named an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours list, in recognition of Dr. Gallagher’s “distinguished service to the law and to human rights as a practitioner, teacher and scholar, particularly in the areas of human trafficking responses and criminal justice.”   Earlier this year, Australian Minister for Home Affairs and Justice Brendan O’Connor conferred upon Dr. Gallagher the inaugural Anti-Slavery Australia Freedom Award.

The Australian government is not alone is recognizing Dr. Gallagher’s contributions to the field, however.  On June 19, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton designated Dr. Gallagher a 2012 Trafficking in Persons Hero at the launch of the 2012 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report.

The Eye of the Beholder: How Bad Data, Scrambles for Funding and Professional Bias Shape Human Trafficking Law and Policy, Dina Francesca Haynes

Following is a portion of a draft chapter entitled The Eye of the Beholder: How Bad Data, Scrambles for Funding and Professional Bias Shape Human Trafficking Law and Policy

Human trafficking is not unique in having attracted multiple and conflicting points of view on everything from the extent of the problem, the definition of what the problem is precisely, and who are its victims to how to best to support them. Like “sexy” and “of the moment” human rights issues of earlier decades, such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and genocide and perhaps like morally intractable issues such as abortion, there are advantages and disadvantages to the level and diversity of attention currently focused on the issue. The advantages are evident: more attention on a still little understood phenomenon should work to bring more funding, more activism, more legal teeth and more assistance to bear in supporting persons who are victims of the problem. But multiple disadvantages exist as well, although often more subtle and harder to discern. The level of interest means that a few experts are perpetually called upon to explain the fundamentals to relative newcomers; accordingly, the level of discourse necessary to tackle this complex issue does not advance rapidly. Too, there is a sort of brain drain, in that those who do gain expertise, particularly among law enforcement and policy makers, are quickly promoted (as there is considerable funding and attention on this issue) and their successors start over again with little or no knowledge. Furthermore, with so much interest even across otherwise uncooperative political divides, high level politicians and policy makers want to be involved and so funding is diverted to “High Level Working Groups” and away from those most likely to encounter a victim “in the field.” Human trafficking then becomes a top down issue, when it needs to be bottom up – driven by the real needs recognized by victim service providers (and specifically including those victim services providers who are not soliciting federal funding, to provide objective data), and voiced by the victims themselves.

One of the most cumbersome issues stymieing anti-trafficking efforts over the past twelve years since the adoption of the Palermo Protocol and the subsequent US Trafficking Victim Protection Act (TVPA) is that far too much of the discussion has centered on sex. Media, politicians, movies, celebrities, prosecutors, law enforcement and even academics have focused their attention almost exclusively on human trafficking for sex.

So much discussion of human trafficking now centers around sex, most audience members attending a talk or reading about human trafficking expect that sex trafficking will be the focus of discussion, even when the discussion is specifically slated to center on human trafficking into domestic servitude, for example. Because the audience has been primed by the media focus on trafficking for sex, they envision an entirely different sort of “victim” when experts talk to them about human trafficking. The audience is prepared for (and expects to hear about) sex and so other areas of human trafficking are ignored, regardless of the fact that the varieties of ways in which humans have been exploited by traffickers abound. In the United States, for example, victims of human trafficking have been forced into severely exploitative labor (domestic service, nannies, agriculture, factory work; cleaners and maintenance crews); misled about the work that would be available and then trapped by their debt and/or lack of immigration status or visa portability (teachers, welders,); adult sex workers deprived of their earnings and coerced or forced into work that they do not wish to do and children forced into sex work and other types of indentured or forced labor (hair braiding). Internationally, people are trafficked from their countries of origin to countries of destination for all of the foregoing reasons, as well types of forced and indentured labor as yet unknown in the United States (camel jockeys, massage on the beach, inherited servitude). People are also trafficked within the interior of their own countries.

In fact, the ILO estimates that 12.3 million people, possibly a majority of whom are women, are in forced labor at any given time. About one and a half million of these may be forced specifically into sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is horrific, to be sure, and must be addressed. But the foregoing figures would suggest that about thirteen percent of forced labor involves sex. Although not all exploitative labor would rise to the level of human trafficking (which requires that one be severely exploited), most forced labor arguably would. Even if more conservatively viewed, much of the world’s human trafficking market is focused on forced labor for work other than sex, while most of the discussions (and assumptions, and funding) focus on trafficking in humans for sex. It is also important to note here, as an introduction to the trouble with statistics which will be covered further below, that the most verifiable figures (those collected by organizations working with victims of human trafficking; IOM, UNODC, ILO), conclude only that they assist more victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Assisting more victims of sexual exploitation and knowing that there therefore are more people exploited for sex than for other forms of labor are two different things. It is also important to know that the US government overlooks involuntary servitude when calculating the number of trafficked persons. Since involuntary servitude would qualify as labor trafficking, were it counted, it is possible that this is another way in which labor trafficking is being underestimated, while sex trafficking is being over-estimated.

Worse still, a growing number of “experts” and politicians perpetuate the uncertain statistics and the conflation between human trafficking and prostitution, and these are shaping anti-trafficking policy. Some of them believe that ending prostitution will actually eradicate human trafficking, while others have the primary objective of abolishing prostitution, and merely use the attention and funding currently available to human trafficking as a vehicle by which to achieve their objective.

Because this chapter is about multiple points of view currently focused on the topic of human trafficking, and because I argue that it is imperative for those purporting to work on human trafficking to be transparent with regard to their agendas so that the audience has a fair chance of understanding the objectives the expert might hold and how that might impact their point of view, it is appropriate at the outset to set forward my own views on the contentious aspects of the issue. I will begin by stating that I take no position on whether or not prostitution should be legalized or abolished. I believe that there are many women who engage in sex work willingly and consensually, and many more that likely would opt for work other than selling sex were it available to them and well paid. I believe that all sex workers should be protected against disease, abuse and horrible working conditions and that sex workers can be raped, deprived of their wages by middlemen, exploited and abused. Because sex workers can be raped, exploited and abused (a view contrary to the position held by some abolitionists, discussed further below), I hold that conflating all sex work with “human trafficking” (or rape, as some of them argue), and arguing that sex work can never be consensual, undermines the ability to protect sex workers from the aforementioned harms. If all prostitution is rape, as some radical feminists argue, then how can those who actually do rape a prostitute be criminally charged? If all prostitution is exploitative, as some also argue, then how can a sex worker recoup wages of which she has been deprived? The available data, such as it is, on the correlation of legalized prostitution to human trafficking has not convinced me one way or the other. While I do appreciate the argument that women should have actual access to other well-paying jobs in order to ascertain whether their choice of sex work is actually a free and consensual one, I do not agree with the “false consciousness” arguments, and find it offensive that some people purporting to work on behalf of victims of human trafficking are so free in stripping them of their individual agency and substituting it with their own. While we may wish it to be so that all women everywhere have a real choice between selling their bodies for sex and electing to become, say, teachers or policewomen, most currently do not have that choice. We can (and should) work toward that goal, but that would require that our anti-trafficking efforts be directed to eradicating poverty and global economic disparity, as I argued in the opening sentences of this chapter, not prostitution. It is simply repugnant for western women to tell women from other parts of the world that, although they may think they have chosen sex work in order to feed their children, this belief is only their ignorant “false consciousness” leading them astray.

I view mine as somewhat of a centrist position, but not aligned with the “neo-abolitionists” — those who characterize their anti-prostitution campaigns as anti-trafficking campaigns, purposely using the terms “abolition” and “modern day slavery” to link their prostitution abolition agenda to the unassailable earlier efforts to end slavery. Finally, and most important to me, I find it deeply problematic that so many discussions of human trafficking devolve immediately into agitation to end prostitution, because this detracts and distracts us from delving into the hard work of eradicating trafficking in human beings. And even more problematic that so much funding and political attention allocated towards human trafficking is directed towards the abolition of prostitution – particularly when it employs bad research to substantiate the correlation.

Prabha Kotiswaran Reviews the UNODC Report on South Asia

Responses to Human Trafficking in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka Legal and Policy Review
UNODC, Regional Office for South Asia
Principal Author
Dr. Sarasu Esther Thomas

International law has witnessed considerable activity around the issue of trafficking in the past decade. Particularly significant is the adoption by the UN of the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking Against Persons, Especially Women and Children (“UN Protocol”)[1] supplementing the 2000 United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.[2] In the less than ten years since the UN Protocol was adopted, no less than 147 states are party to the UN Convention, while117 are also signatories to the UN Protocol.[3] Further, given the regional nature of much trafficking, states have also begun to develop regional legal instruments to target trafficking. Against this backdrop and given the anecdotal information of the resistance of South Asian governments to the UN Protocol, it is useful to assess the state of anti-trafficking law in South Asia.

Undertaken for the Regional Office of UNODC in South Asia under the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, the 2011 report Responses to Human Trafficking in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka Legal and Policy Review (hereinafter “Review”) is possibly the first comparative report assessing the legal and policy frameworks of many of the countries in the South Asian region. At the outset, it fills a major gap in the literature and is valuable for this very reason. Yet, for reasons not explained in the Review, there is a glaring omission of a major South Asian jurisdiction, namely, of Pakistan. There are of course other countries, which form part of the regional-political entity South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) such as Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives, which are also not considered in the Review.

The Review suggests that the domestic legal regimes of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka against trafficking leave much to be desired. To begin with, not all of them are even signatories to the UN Protocol.[4] More significantly, the regional definition of trafficking as embodied in the SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution, 2002, is at odds with the definition set forth in the UN Protocol to the extent it defines trafficking in terms of “moving, selling or buying of women and children for prostitution” with or without their consent. Thus the SAARC Convention narrows the UN Protocol definition of trafficking by applying it only to women and children rather than also including men, for the purposes of prostitution rather than employment in other labor sectors and by ignoring the possibility of voluntary migration.

This situation is repeated in each of the domestic legal settings (3, 11, 21, 22, 54, 59). None of the four South Asian countries have a comprehensive law dealing with trafficking. Neither do they define trafficking in terms of the UN Protocol. When trafficking is explicitly dealt with, it tends to be in the context of anti-sex work criminal laws (as in India) or laws dealing with violence against women (Bangladesh). Occasionally, trafficking for other purposes such as organ trafficking is acknowledged and rendered illegal (Nepal). Yet, they also equate sex work with trafficking (Bangladesh, Nepal).[5] Thus, it is clear that in the South Asian context, trafficking is very much associated with sex trafficking and sex work. In a sense, this is somewhat predictable. Indeed the preoccupation and sex panic around sex work is what ultimately drove the UN Protocol negotiations and the considerable resources states are now devoting to this problem.

Yet, if we understood trafficking in the most general terms as coerced migration for purposes of exploitation and want to make anti-trafficking law meaningful, we need to go beyond untethering domestic anti-trafficking law from its preoccupation with sex work. The Review makes a beginning in this respect when its lists the range of “miscellaneous” laws in each jurisdiction that could be thought to be dealing with trafficking. Perhaps as testimony to the colonial legal pasts of the four jurisdictions, these laws could be categorized into the following categories. The first category is of general criminal laws, which deriving from the Indian Penal Code, 1860 contain offences relating to kidnapping/abduction, slavery, buying and selling girls for purposes of prostitution and unlawful compulsory labor. To the extent that exploitative labor practices are of considerable vintage dating back from the days of slavery, these criminal laws reflect the prohibition of such practices. The Sri Lankan Penal Code is the only criminal code, which has incorporated in 2006 a broadly phrased offence against modern trafficking by drawing on the UN Protocol. The second category of laws deals with vulnerable subjects like children therefore covering issues of juvenile justice and child labor or bonded laborers or members of the scheduled caste and tribes who are enticed or sexually exploited. The third category of laws deals with foreign migration meant to address the exploitative practices, that more recent waves of South Asian migrants have faced when traveling to the Middle-East in particular for work. While this overview provided by the Review of the range of laws that could be used against trafficking is useful, the Review could have offered a sharper analysis of more recent laws in each of the four jurisdictions against coerced migration for exploitative work. Given the high levels of internal trafficking in countries like India, laws passed in the 1970s to deal with coerced internal migration such as the Inter-State Migrant Workers’ Act in India could have been considered. Similarly, the Review considers laws relating to foreign migration in some countries but not others (e.g. Emigration Act in India).

There are certain other blind spots in the Review that I will allude to. First, the UN Protocol presumes that trafficking is driven by organized crime, which may not be sociologically true in the South Asian context. Hence despite the repeated reference in the Review to the fact that South Asian laws do not provide adequately for organized crime apart from some general principles of criminal liability, we might ask whether this might not simply be the result of a factual disjuncture in way trafficking is organised in South Asia and in the West. This points to a larger problem within the Review. Given the dearth of comparative work in South Asia on trafficking, I hoped very much that the Review would marshal literature from the four jurisdictions to problematize our preconceived notions of trafficking by illustrating the range of trafficking scenarios in South Asia. Instead, sadly the Review draws heavily on the US TIP reports for describing the trafficking problem in the four countries. This is problematic given the poor empirical basis of the TIP reports historically speaking. This is also tied into the silence within the Review on the impetus for the recent passage of anti-trafficking laws in countries like Bangladesh (Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, 2000) and Nepal (Trafficking in Persons and Transportation (Control) Act, 2007). After all, if the South Asian region has so far shown little interest in conforming domestic law to the UN Protocol. Some indication here of the pressures that South Asian governments may have felt in response to their ranking by the US Trafficking in Persons Report under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, 2000 might have been useful.

In conclusion, the Review usefully documents contemporary legal developments around trafficking in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It focuses on constitutional legal frameworks in these countries, their domestic statutory law and judicial pronouncements. This understanding of domestic law becomes critical as international organizations like UNODC and ILO point to the conceptual ambiguities that have haunted the Protocol, its definitions and its operationalization. In other words, the diffusion of the UN Protocol will depend largely on how domestic law builds on the core legal concepts central to the UN Protocol namely of the mode of trafficking and the coercion and exploitation involved in the process. It is indeed unfortunate that the true spirit of the UN Protocol has not been realised in the laws of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka given their inordinate emphasis on prostitution rather than other trafficking into other labor sectors. It is very much hoped that these countries will in the future expand their understanding of trafficking drawing on their high levels of internal migration and outward migration levels to articulate a vision of anti-trafficking law from the perspective of developing countries. Countries like Nepal have already shown that they can build higher levels of procedural safeguards for victims of trafficking and the adjudication system (such as through Trafficking in Persons and Transportation (Control) Act, 2007) when compared to international law.

Trafficked Victims or Labor Migrants? The Indentured Mobility of Filipina Hostess Workers in Japan – Kimberly Kay Hoang reviews Rhacel Parrenas’ new book: Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo

Congratulations to Rhacel Parrenas for this glowing review of her latest book, Illicit Flirtations?: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo! To read the review, click here.

Congratulations to Anne Gallagher for being awarded the Anti-Slavery Australia Freedom Award!

See announcement here.

HIV and Women: Incongruent Policies, Criminal Consequences by Aziza Ahmed

UN Women must take an aggressive role in the standardization of laws and policies at the global and national level where their incongruence has negative and often criminal consequences for the health and lives of mean and girls. The is article focuses in on thee such examples: opt-out testing for HIV, criminalization of the vertical transmissions, and the new World Health Organization guidelines on breastfeeding.

HIV and Women