Trafficked children sent to France upon arrival at UK

A report by the Children’s Commissioner for England has revealed that from 1995 onwards, children who arrived at Dover on their own were sent immediately to France as part of a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between the two border agencies.

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Source: Guardian

Legal aid cuts could force trafficking victims to seek asylum

Lawyers have warned that proposed cuts to publicly funded immigration cases could force people who have been trafficked into the UK to seek asylum, even if this is not the best solution for them.

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Source: s o l i c i t o r s   j o u r n a l

Still waiting for an anti-human trafficking law

(IRIN) – South Africa has been identified as a major human-trafficking destination for victims from within the country, the region and beyond, yet there is no legislation that specifically criminalises human trafficking and protects victims.

This report online: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93104

Cameron’s promise on trafficking threatened

After claiming human trafficking issues as a top priority, Cameron has failed to set agendas on the issue, provide timescales for action, or retain experts in the field amongst staff.

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Source: Guardian

Amnesty welcomes report on migration and trafficking

Amnesty International today (14 December 2010) welcomed the new report on Migration and Trafficking produced by the Scottish Parliament’s Equal Opportunities Committee. The human rights group welcomed the comprehensive analysis of the current scale and awareness of trafficking in Scotland and the clear agenda for tackling this appalling violation of basic human rights.

Amnesty particularly welcomed the report’s recommendations for better support for victims of trafficking in Scotland, together with a presumption against the prosecution of victims for crimes committed as part of the trafficking experience. Amnesty also applauded the Committee’s call for a robust approach to prosecuting the traffickers who profit from the trade in, and exploitation of, human beings through efforts to increase Scotland’s disappointing conviction rate for trafficking offences.

John Watson, Scottish Programme Director for Amnesty International, said: “Our own research suggests that this modern day slave trade is taking place around Scotland.

“The Committee has produced a thorough examination of this extremely serious problem and sets out a clear and really positive way forward in dealing with this appalling crime. We look forward to a renewed effort from the Scottish Government in response”.

Film festival challenges human trafficking

Residents of Bristol are being challenged to confront the reality of human trafficking with a series of films exploring the issue.

They are shown by Unchosen, a project that uses film to challenge trafficking, and incorporates discussion with directors.

Unchosen maintains that human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal activity in the world, a global problem affecting the quietest town and village.

But they add that the power of Understanding Trafficking, to be shown on Tuesday, focuses on the human detail of one particular route and region. The film reports that every month at least 500 girls are trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh, down the eastern corridor to India. Their fate is either forced labour or the international sex trade.

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Councils ‘lost’ 145 child asylum seekers last year

By Owen Bowcott

Almost 150 children and young people went missing without trace from local authority care homes last year, according to returns from local councils. Most were juvenile asylum seekers who had arrived in the UK alone.

The pattern of disappearances suggests they were victims of trafficking operations and were eventually forced into marriage, domestic servitude or sexual exploitation in Britain, the Care Leavers’ Association (CLA) warned.

The organisation, which submitted freedom of information requests to more than 200 councils for the survey, identified 145 youngsters who had left care homes without permission and could no longer be contacted between September 2008 and September this year.

View full article here

UNODC tool to help prevent people trafficking

Photo: Naresh Newar/IRIN

The UNODC manual is a practical guide and training tool based on the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released a manual to help build capacity among criminal justice practitioners to prevent and combat human trafficking.

The Anti-Human Trafficking Manual for Criminal Justice Practitioners is a practical guide and training tool based on the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children.

The manual explores a victim-centred approach to effective law enforcement and some content is based on the experiences of more than 45 judges, prosecutors, investigators, academics and NGO and inter-governmental organization representatives.

According to UNODC, more human traffickers are being convicted globally but the process is bogged down by the absence of anti-trafficking legislation in some countries or by the inability to translate legislation into action.

In some cases, human trafficking is mistaken for migrant smuggling, while some victims fear to cooperate because of threats and intimidation by traffickers.

The most common form of trafficking, UNODC noted in a February report based on data from 155 countries, was for sexual exploitation, especially of women and girls.

In 30 percent of the countries, women were the main traffickers. Globally, almost 20 percent of victims were children – although in parts of Africa this proportion rose to 100 percent.

“More must be done to reduce the vulnerability of victims, increase the risks to traffickers, and lower demand for the goods and services of modern-day slaves,” UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said during the release of the report.

More homes for refugees as Europe aims to end people-trafficking

By David Charter

Europe is planning to take more refugees under a common resettlement scheme launched on Wednesday that aims to end people-trafficking from the world’s conflict zones.

In a step towards a common EU asylum policy, the proposals from the European Commission will see a co-ordinated plan for receiving displaced people who already have refugee status but are often stuck in camps in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The first group to be dealt with is expected to be Iraqi refugees based in Syria and Jordan while future beneficiaries could be Somali refugees in Kenya and Sudanese refugees in Chad.

Governments that take people from the priority area will receive 4,000 euros per person from the EU’s Refugee Fund, raising fears that those not identified as an EU priority could be shunned. The scheme is expected to extend to all 27 member nations and will start with closer co-operation between the ten countries, including Britain, that already have resettlement schemes.

European countries found homes for 4,378 refugees from outside the EU’s borders last year, just 6.7 per cent of the global total of 65,596 resettled persons. The UN’s refugee agency has said that there are 203,000 refugees in urgent need of a permanent home this year.

“This is an example of the EU expressing shared responsibility and also about increasing the international standing of the EU,” said a spokesman for the European Commission. “You have a situation where Canada resettled 10,000 people last year while the EU did just half of that, so we want to improve our situation.

“Currently resettlement is carried out by EU member states without much consultation and co-ordination. The programme provides for closer political and practical co-operation to increase the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of resettlement.”

The common EU priorities will be decided by a new Resettlement Expert Group. The identification of refugees to be resettled and services such as medical screening and visa arrangements will be helped by a new agency, the European Asylum Support Office, which is to be established next year.

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles described the proposal as “a good first step towards a fully-fledged European resettlement programme, which should ultimately lead to an increase of resettlement places in Europe.” But it warned that the setting of priorties should not be used as an excuse to reject non-priority cases.

A spokesman for the British Government said that it had resettled 2,100 refugees since 2004. He added: “We are pleased to see the EU move towards a common system of refugee resettlement, which has the potential to benefit some of the worlds most vulnerable people.

“We will consider and scrutinise the details of these new proposals very carefully prior to agreement and the UK has the ability to opt out of any proposal that is not in our national interest.”

The launch was in danger of being overshadowed yesterday by a row between Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, and the European Commission over Italy’s treatment of migrants. The Commission has asked for details of a reported incident in which a boatful of 75 migrants, thought to be Somali, was intercepted by the Italian coastguard 27 miles (43 km) from Sicily and sent back to Libya without checking if any were legitimate asylum-seekers.

Mr Berlusconi threatened to block decisions at the forthcoming European Council meeting in protest at remarks from a Commission spokesman who stated that Italy was being asked to explain its actions. “If commissioners and spokesmen continue as they have done all these years, they should be fired in a definitive manner,” he said.

Mind your language

On a day where there are several appalling linked stories in the press about the horror and misery of true trafficking (here, here and here), I was sorry to read the Home Office attempting to claim false credit for a trafficking criminal conviction.

The press release in question is dated 1 July 2009 and entitled ‘Man jailed for six years for human trafficking’. However, on further reading it transpires that the offence was a ‘facilitation’ offence, probably under section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971. It certainly sounds like a conventional smuggling case, not at all a trafficking case. There is a separate specific offence of trafficking, under section 2 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Clamaints etc) Act 2004. As far as I know there has never been a successful conviction for trafficking.

The Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, to which the UK is now belatedly a signatory, includes a specific definition of trafficking:

“Trafficking in human beings” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

This was not a trafficking case if the body of the press release is to be believed, and it is plain wrong and misleading for the Home Office to be trying to claim credit for a trafficking conviction when in fact there haven’t been any. In addition, the press release damages public understanding by confusing smuggling and trafficking. Smuggling is with consent, trafficking is without – it’s not a difficult conceptual difference.

This post joins another previous one on misleading press releases. Frankly, I’d quite like them to stop the appalling puns as well.

Source:Free Movement

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