This short essay explores the dilemmas faced by anti-trafficking activists working to bring human rights to bear. Although the essence of ‘trafficking’ is most often framed as about gender, sexual harm, and prosecution of ‘traffickers’, effective rights interventions in ‘trafficking’ must be situated in a deeper understanding of the modern reality of globalization. While I am not arguing that understanding gender or sexual harm are irrelevant in anti-trafficking work, hyper-attention to stories of sex slaves weakens our interventions. It is critical to understand the histories of the frameworks (like ‘trafficking’) in which we work. Failing that, we become inadvertent pawns, allowing governments to take up the rhetoric of rights without a real shift in power. Anti-trafficking work is on the edge of this form of complicity.

Pouring New Wine Into Old Bottles

Although women’s rights advocates came to human rights demanding accountability for all human rights, this demand has been stymied. Specific elements of violence against women (VAW) as a human rights issue, coupled with sexual harm’s particular operation to make VAW visible, produced a parodox: the harms themselves are not yet effectively responded to, yet women’s sexual vulnerability is now firmly on the global agenda. This piece explores the state-oriented focus of rights work on the suffering body, its reliance on criminal law, and its failure to develop a theory of economic justice. Health and human rights work must consider the complexities of portraying women as sexual agents, targets of abuse and citizens at the same time, if it seeks to fulfill its original promise.

Sexuality, Violence against Women, and Human Rights- Women Make Demands and Ladies Get Protection