Abstract
Exploitation of women in the sex industry is the best known but probably not the most common outcome of trafficking in human beings. Still, trafficking for labour exploitation gets less attention from policy makers, the police and researchers. The legal framework allows dealing with trafficking for labour exploitation, but the prosecution of such cases is still in its infancy. In this contribution we focus on labour exploitation. We first present the legal framework. Then we go into the lack of knowledge in this area, followed by what we do know about risk sectors, victims, and what makes them vulnerable for exploitation. Focussing on the Netherlands, we describe the perpetrators and the difficulties in investigating and prosecuting trafficing cases in general and labour exploitation in particular, rounding off with some general conclusions.
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Notes
Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1957).
As well as EU legislation: the EU Framework Decision on Combatting Trafficking in Human Beings (2004).
Written every four years by the National Police Services Agency.
The so-called barrier model is currently being used more broadly in experimental plots where different parties cooperate in using the barriers to fight different kinds of organized crime, e.g. money laundering, cybercrime, and large scale hemp growing. The idea is that criminals can best be identified and tackled when they are dealing with barriers they have to overcome in order to commit a crime and to collect the proceeds.
OCTA refers to trafficking in human beings in general, not to labour exploitation specifically.
This act of 2004 establishes regulations and licensing procedures for labour providers (gangmasters) and sub-contractors supplying workers in specific industries.
They conducted a survey among 5513 randomly selected households in important source countries of human trafficking: Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, in order to find out who had a trafficking victim among their family members.
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Smit, M. Trafficking in human beings for labour exploitation. The case of the Netherlands. Trends Organ Crim 14, 184–197 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-011-9123-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-011-9123-3