UN Human Trafficking Prevention Protocol – An Analysis

Human trafficking refers to the process through which human is sold out in an explorative situation for monetary gain. It is one of the prominent humanitarian crisis, an estimated twenty-seven million people trafficked globally. Smuggling of migrants involves procurement of financial and illegal entry of a person into other states which is not resident or national. International efforts address effects developed a comprehensive framework to solve these issues. In recent years increasing awareness about human trafficking throughout the international community urged international bodies to take immediate actions. At the same year United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, was drafted. This enforces law and combat protocol that provides many detailed provision for protection and assistance for victims.

Despite the existence of international comprehensive international legal framework, a large section of children, women, and men trafficked each year. Victims may be trafficked within countries or across the border via sexual exploitation, forced marriage, organ removal, exploitive labor, etc. the furtive nature of human trafficking is hard to discover. While it has enhanced transnational cooperation in tackling this issue, it fails to take into account and thereby does not provide solutions for, non-compliance, a corrupt criminal justice system, as well as the reintegration of victims back into society. The combining effect of corruption and negligence boost the level of confidence of criminals.

The provision implements failed to uproot this issue. Each of these provisions begun with high motivation and circulatory approach for reducing trafficking but the end results are the opposite.

 Even though our knowledge of trafficking is incomplete, certain factor such as exploitation in society mark as one of the significant figures includes in trafficking.  Human trafficking is largely hidden crime that comes into the limelight in recent years. The protocol against Smuggling of Migrants via Sea, Land, Air adopted by General Assembly entered into force on 28 January 2004 that mainly deals with the growing problem of organized groups of a criminal who smuggle migrants through different modes. While protect victims is the only objective which is served by these combat provision, but this is something that requires a great deal of attention. The lack of any hard obligation and law enforcement can be seen in Thailand where trafficked women are not granted legal documents to stay according to the Thai constitution. This rule goes against UN article 8.4 which mention state parties should accept those victims who have crossed the boundaries during trafficking and don’t have legal documentation. Hence this freedom of anticipating according to UN rule collapses with the state authority those results in no justice with the trafficked individuals. Similarly, petty bribery to a large number of funds has a serious implication on both the detainees and efficient judicial system. As mentioned by Thrupkew, the root cause of increasing crime is the fragile judiciary system. Countries like Thailand and Canada, police are of ill repute for their involvement in trafficking system through extracting money from the accused suspect. The politician takes sex slavery as minor issues and is not ready to form a group chain to reduce this heinous crime. As such, although the Protocol does provide an international legislative framework and is very comprehensive in its scope of human trafficking, it is ineffective as local authorities are more concerned about their own personal well-being than national political concerns, and thus do not enforce these measures on the ground.

Preceding with more information, provision for providing psychological and social recovery to victims are one of the component  UN protocol, is not enough to facilitate the integration of the victims and society manually. Many of the victims who had been the part of trafficking abandoned from society or treated as a minority.  This would have a great impact on the mental status which brings anxiety, depression, confidence loss, etc.

 Yet psychological counseling is provided to victims but the outcome results are not satisfactory as most the victims are damaged from internally to socially. The problems arise when language occurs as a barrier. There is a strong possibility of re-enslavement as most of the girls don’t know the foreign language. Trafficking at any of the level hindered the growth of victims. Implementation of a provision is equally important as the safety of an individual. To make the world free from trafficking, we have to analyze each standard measure that causes its exploration.  State governments and the UN have to come together to eradicate this crime in order to save humanity.