Article 6 of the Protocol against TIP: Assistance to and protection of victims of trafficking in persons

1. In appropriate cases and to the extent possible under its domestic law, each State Party shall protect the privacy and identity of victims of trafficking in persons, including, inter alia, by making legal proceedings relating to such trafficking confidential.

2. Each State Party shall ensure that its domestic legal or administrative system contains measures that provide to victims of trafficking in persons, in appropriate cases:

• Information on relevant court and administrative proceedings;
• Assistance to enable their views and concerns to be presented and considered at appropriate stages of criminal proceedings against offenders, in a manner not prejudicial to the rights of the defence.

3. Each State Party shall consider implementing measures to provide for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims of trafficking in persons, including, in appropriate cases, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, other relevant organizations and other elements of civil society, and, in particular, the provision of:

• Appropriate housing;
• Counselling and information, in particular as regards their legal rights, in a language that the victims of trafficking in persons can understand;
• Medical, psychological and material assistance; and
• Employment, educational and training opportunities.

4. Each State Party shall take into account, in applying the provisions of this article, the age, gender and special needs of victims of trafficking in persons, in particular the special needs of children, including appropriate housing, education and care. […]

Article 16 of the Protocol against SOM: Protection and assistance measures

1. In implementing this Protocol, each State Party shall take, consistent with its obligations under international law, all appropriate measures, including legislation if necessary, to preserve and protect the rights of persons who have been the object of conduct set forth in article 6 of this Protocol as accorded under applicable international law, in particular the right to life and the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

2. Each State Party shall take appropriate measures to afford migrants appropriate protection against violence that may be inflicted upon them, whether by individuals or groups, by reason of being the object of conduct set forth in article 6 of this Protocol.

3. Each State Party shall afford appropriate assistance to migrants whose lives or safety are endangered by reason of being the object of conduct set forth in article 6 of this Protocol.

4. In applying the provisions of this article, States Parties shall take into account the special needs of women and children.

2011 European Union Anti-Trafficking Directive, Recital 3

This Directive recognizes the gender-specific phenomenon of trafficking and that women and men are often trafficked for different purposes. For this reason, assistance and support measures should also be gender-specific where appropriate. The 'push' and 'pull' factors may be different depending on the sectors concerned, such as trafficking in human beings into the sex industry or for labour exploitation in, for example, construction work, the agricultural sector or domestic servitude.

Considerations regarding male trafficking victims

A lack of a gendered approach to trafficking undermines the uniqueness of the male victim's experience. Gender stereotypes can undermine the ability to correctly identify male trafficking victims. This prevents male victims from receiving the necessary assistance and protection services. Stereotypical constructions of masculinity may result in men's reluctance to acknowledge that they are trafficked and/or to identify themselves as victims.

Source: ICAT 2015 Gender and Trafficking

Article 10 (2)of the Protocol against TIP

2. States Parties shall provide or strengthen training for law enforcement, immigration and other relevant officials in the prevention of trafficking in persons. The training should focus on methods used in preventing such trafficking, prosecuting the traffickers and protecting the rights of the victims, including protecting the victims from the traffickers. The training should also take into account the need to consider human rights and child- and gender-sensitive issues and it should encourage cooperation with non-governmental organizations, other relevant organizations and other elements of civil society.

Interviewing considerations

• Even when an interview has established trust with victims and witnesses, they may never provide a full account in a single interview. Aside from the trauma they have suffered, other sociological and psychological barriers impede the process, including sociocultural differences, language and gender.
• Gender issues significantly affect the interviewer's capacity to obtain information.
• Trafficked women and children frequently suffer sexual abuse and violence and may be reluctant to seek assistance because of the shame and stigmatization which may flow from disclosing their experiences. Men, particularly those from a culture with a traditional view of masculinity, may not want to admit their victimization because they fear that their disclosure of losing control of their lives may lead to perceptions of diminished masculinity. For these reasons, men and women may perhaps be more willing to talk to law enforcement personnel and service providers of the same gender.
• Investigators who are fluent in the language of the person they are interviewing and have cultural affinity with the person may have more success.

Source: UNODC (2008). Toolkit to Combat Trafficking in Persons Global Programme against Trafficking in Human Beings. pp. 176-177

Excerpt from UNODC's basic training manual on investigating and prosecuting the smuggling of migrants

Non-discrimination: It is a fundamental principle of international human rights law that all persons have a right to be recognized as a person before the law, are to be treated as equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.

Law enforcers shall not unlawfully discriminate based on race, gender, religion, language, colour, political opinion, national origin, property, birth or other status.

The fact that everybody is equal before the law does not mean, however, that everybody is identical. Hence, it is not considered to be discriminatory for a law enforcer to apply certain special measures designed to address the special status and needs of women (including pregnant woman and nursing mothers), juveniles, the sick, the elderly, people with special needs and others requiring special treatment in accordance with international human rights standards.

Source: UNODC (2010). Basic training manual on investigating and prosecuting the smuggling of migrants

Violence in the safety of home: life in Nigeria after selling sex in Europe

Many women find themselves returning to situations of everyday violence after being 'saved' from selling sex in Europe. Why are some types of suffering seen as more legitimate than others?

Identifying and separating 'victims of trafficking' from 'criminals' - the undocumented migrants considered guilty of violating immigration laws - is a complex daily practice in anti-trafficking work. Who is worthy of assistance and who is not? What are the continuing effects of these designations on women  after  they are deported for selling sex in Europe?

Crossing from Nigeria to Europe is expensive, in large part because increasingly strict border controls have forced more and more migrants to employ smugglers to secure their passage. The price for this service ranged, according to the Nigerian migrant women with whom I work, from €40,000 to €60,000 in June 2015. The route takes a prospective migrant through the Sahara Desert to Libya before transporting her across the Mediterranean to Italy. While the women trying their luck in Europe may not know all the conditions and hazards of their job upon arrival, most know that they will work for two to three hard years under a 'madam' to repay their debt.

I refer to the movement characterized by this debt - seen by the women as part of a joint migration arrangement between them, their families, and their 'sponsors' - as  indentured sex work migration. The women who undertake it are vulnerable to violence and severe exploitation and share common experiences of living undocumented in Europe and doing sex work to repay this debt. Despite these commonalities, those who are discovered may have remarkably divergent fates: some are deported as undocumented immigrants, while others are identified as 'victims of trafficking' and returned to Nigeria through the so-called assisted voluntary return and reintegration programme (AVRR). The former are given nothing, while the latter receive a small amount of money and psycho-social assistance to 're-integrate' themselves into Nigeria.

It is difficult to decipher from their narratives why some women were designated 'victims' while others ended up 'criminals'. Their experiences in Europe were remarkably similar. Instead, what becomes apparent when listening to their stories is that their labels have been shaped by arbitrary encounters and chance, and the unsystematic consequences of meeting a particular immigration official or social worker who might or might not take an interest in their case.

The case of 'Grace'

Grace is a Nigerian woman who spent six years selling sex on the streets of Italian cities before she was identified as a 'victim of trafficking' by the Italian authorities. She felt forced to accept the AVRR because she had no other options. I met Grace seven months after her return from Italy at a food stall she had opened on the edge of Benin City, Nigeria. Her customers were truck drivers and local sex workers, and the business was doing well. She recounted to me that, two months after her return, armed men came to her stall and stole the cooking pots, the food, and most of her money. Her motivation for accepting the AVRR in Italy - the financial assistance - was lost in the robbery and the local NGO could not obtain any more funds from the Italian donors.

A common argument against repatriation is that traffickers might lie in wait for women at the airports to claim unpaid debts. That is not what happened to Grace. Instead, she entered a situation of increased vulnerability in Nigeria because while she could not afford a secure lifestyle, she was imagined having returned with assets from Europe. Grace, like many other women who have been 'returned', live and work on the outskirts where rents are lower. These are dangerous areas with few paved roads and even less streetlights, and many women cannot even afford lockable doors. Yet she had been given money to open a stall, and this made her a target. In other words, while Grace was vulnerable to deportation in Europe, she became vulnerable in Benin City  because  of  deportation.

What happened to Grace is emblematic of the dangers faced by 'returned' Nigerian sex workers. As the experiences of these women make clear, violence, vulnerability and victimhood are not exclusively connected to sex work and migration abroad but are part of everyday life 'at home' in Benin City. They are regular and expected occurrences that transpired  outside  the state of indenture. This truth too often remains hidden because the focus on the perceived violence of trafficking "renders other forms of violence invisible or normal", in the words of Baye and Heumann, and excludes both 'victims' and 'criminals' from protection. Moreover, this focus obscures the violence perpetrated by actors other than the individuals who facilitated or caused their migration. Thus, when I asked the women to compare Europe to Nigeria, many told me that it was safer to sell sex on the streets of Rome or Hamburg than to run a food stall in Benin City, even though many experienced intense violence in Europe as well. (…)

Source: Sine Plambech (2015). Violence in the safety of home: life in Nigeria after selling sex in Europe . OpenDemocracy Blog, Beyond Trafficking and Slavery, 12 August 2015.

Indonesian men returning home after having been trafficked

"Experiences of long-term reintegration, particularly men 's experiences, are largely missing from research on human trafficking in Indonesia (and indeed more widely), and yet understanding these experiences is key to our ability to design and implement tailored and effective reintegration programmes and policies. Also missing is an understanding of the nature of and reasons for tensions within men 's families and communities after trafficking and over the course of their post-trafficking lives. These experiences need to be better understood to ensure more effective identification and assistance of Indonesian men and the support needed to recover and reintegrate after trafficking. This is particularly pressing when support provided by the family may be the only assistance available to trafficked men in their lives after trafficking, and when community dynamics may, in some cases, undermine their reintegration."

Source: Surtees, Rebecca (2018). At Home: Family reintegration of trafficked Indonesian men. Anti-Trafficking Review, Special Issue - Life After Trafficking, no 10. (p.1)