What demand side measures against trafficking?
by Catherine MALLET
The EU Affairs Office recently attended the final conference of a research project on demand side measures against trafficking. The research was commissioned as part of the EU’s 2012-2016 strategy to fight human trafficking to better understanding of demand side of trafficking and to analyse policy measures that influence it. 20 countries were involved in this study (non-EU included). Now the challenge is to make policy and advocacy actions from the dissemination of the results. They hope to influence national action plans and strategies, the new EU strategy, the UN’s Global plan of action on trafficking to come out in September as well as GRETA and the Council of Europe.
The aim of the research project was to:
- Investigate the concept of demand
- Investigate types of human trafficking
- Go beyond the existing policy approach
Presentations looked at demand for exploitable labour, demands on workers and unpacking demand-side measures in the context of labour relations; preventing exploitation and trafficking in the sex work sector, and trafficking in domestic work. It also debated whether repressive or discouraging policies were effective.
The conference concluded that public philosophies can have an impact on what is seen to be the morally right policy and what behaviour or practice do we disapprove of … It was stressed the need to distinguish between services, exploitation and abuse, but that we also need to look at supply. They also concluded that context specific policies were needed and the need also to look at different sectors such as agriculture/ construction as they are all different. It was recommended that other policies that relate such as migration have an impact and therefore need to be included in the issue. It was pointed out that although demand can refer to all forms of trafficking (widened scope since UN Protocol) in general people still mainly look at sex industry when thinking about the demand side. They also concluded that there should be a focus on preventing the vulnerability of workers rather than criminalisation - i.e. rights and information as well as a focus on change of behaviour, and the need for the impact assessment of measures.
- See the project website here for more policy briefs and to find out more about the project and its partners http://www.demandat.eu/
The Salvation Army is planning to carry out a campaign next year on addressing the demand side of human trafficking and therefore looking at the results of this research could be beneficial to those involved in the campaign.
Tags: Europe