• E4J University Module Series: Trafficking in Persons & Smuggling of Migrants

• Module 1: Migrant Smuggling as a Specific Crime Type

• Introduction and learning outcomes

• Key issues

  • The criminalization of smuggling of migrants
  • • UNTOC and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants
    • Offences under the Protocol
    • Financial or other material benefit
    • Aggravating circumstances
    • Criminal liability
  • Non-criminalization of smuggled migrants
  • • The scope of protection
    • Humanitarian exemption
    • Jurisdiction
  • Migrant smuggling v. irregular migration
  • Migrant smuggling vis-à-vis other crime types

• Exercises

• Possible class structure

• Core reading

• Advanced reading

• Other resources

• Student assessment

• Additional teaching tools

 

Published in January 2019.

 

 

   This module is a resource for lecturers   

 

Migrant smuggling vis-à-vis other crime types

 

The relationship between migrant smuggling and other serious crimes may be addressed from different perspectives:

• Further to criminalizing the offences enshrined in the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants, States are further required to criminalize several types of conduct under its parent Convention (UNTOC): participation in an organized criminal group (article 5 UNTOC), laundering of the proceeds of crime (article 6 UNTOC), corruption (article 8 UNTOC), and obstruction of justice (article 23 UNTOC). The linkage between smuggling of migrants and these crimes is often 'structural'. That is, corruption (many times of State agents and public officials) is a means to give effect to smuggling, money-laundering maximizes smugglers' possibility of evading detection, obstruction of justice - often by threats and intimidation of smuggled migrants - is a powerful mechanism to obstruct investigations. For an in-depth analysis of the role of corruption in the smuggling of migrants see UNODC's Issue Paper on Corruption and the Smuggling of Migrants .
• From a substantive viewpoint, migrant smuggling may be inextricably connected to other crimes. For instance, it is not uncommon that smuggled migrants become victims of trafficking in persons, for example in debt bondage situations. Smuggled migrants might be used as 'mules' for the trafficking of drugs.

 

Next: Exercises

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