Pouring New Wine into Old Bottles: Understanding the Dilemmas of Contemporary Trafficking Work by Alice Miller
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,...
Read MoreSEXUALITY, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, AND HUMAN RIGHTS: Women Make Demands and Ladies Get Protection by Alice Miller
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...
Read MorePreparing for Civil Disobedience: Indian Sex Workers and the Law by Prabha Kotiswaran
This article deals with the reform of prostitution laws in India. It begins with an outline of the current legislative framework available in this regard and then critically evaluates the various alternatives to the framework that have been proposed through the 1990s by the Indian government, universities and research institutions, the Indian women’s movement and sex-worker organizations. Mter undertaking an historical examination of prostitution laws in India from colonial times up to...
Read MoreBorn unto Brothels—Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area by Prabha Kotiswaran
The global sex panic around sex work and trafficking has fostered prostitution law reform worldwide. While the normative status of sex work remains deeply contested, abolitionists and sex work advocates alike display an unwavering faith in the power of criminal law; for abolitionists, strictly enforced criminal laws can eliminate sex markets, whereas for sex work advocates, decriminalization can empower sex workers. I problematize both narratives by delineating the political economy and legal...
Read MoreTrafficking in Human Beings: the Slavery that Surounds Us by Ann Jordan
At the end of the last century, the world witnessed the growth of a modern form of slavery — trafficking in human beings. These modern traffickers treat women, men and children as commodities to abuse, sell, and move across borders like illegal drugs or stolen weapons. Modern traffickers have many faces. They are diplomats who import domestic workers and hold them in isolation and forced labor in their homes.1 They are members of organized criminal networks that move people into forced...
Read MoreFact or fiction: what do we really know about human trafficking? by Ann Jordan
“64 percent of all the world’s statistics are made up right there on the spot “82.4 percent of people believe ‘em whether they’re accurate statistics or not”1 Statistics form the core of many policies, funding decisions and program designs around human trafficking into forced labor and debt bondage. But are the statistics accurate? How can people decide whether statements such as the following ones are supported by evidence? Issue-Paper-3 Fact or Fiction – What Do...
Read More
