Australia's National Response To Human Trafficking

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This essay will attempt to argue that the current international and national responses to human trafficking are insufficient and ineffective, with particular focus on sexual exploitation of women. Human trafficking is one of the worlds fastest growing forms of transnational crime. The United Nations office on drugs and crime estimates there are nearly 140,000 victims a year. One of the main reasons for the growth in human trafficking is due to economic reasons with victims choosing to leave their country to find better opportunities elsewhere. There are various definitions over the term Human trafficking and what it constitutes, so for the purpose of this paper Human trafficking will be defined as, “the recruitment and transfer of persons by …show more content…

The United Nations Trafficking protocol (2000) is seen as an international guideline of combatting human trafficking, however states who have ratified the protocol need to criminalise trafficking as a felony in their own criminal code (Teshome, 2011). Australia has both ratified the Trafficking protocol and amended their criminal code to further focus on the issue of human trafficking. The issue with Australia’s national response to trafficking is that there is confusing with the definition of trafficking and the commonalities it has with people smuggling (Teshome, 2011). The human smuggling and trafficking centre defines smuggling as ‘two willing parties who will go their separate ways once business is finished’. The Australian criminal code does not include the term ‘exploitation’ in their definition of trafficking and without this it makes it easy for officials to confuse the two terms. The combination of this definition under Australian law combined with Australia’s strict immigration policies leaves the victims of trafficking accused to be a smuggled person resulting in their immediate deportation (Teshome, 2011). This is both a criminal justice and immigration issue on Australia’s part. When dealing with a human trafficking case, the Australian government focuses their attention on persecuting the …show more content…

Anti-trafficking laws have been introduced globally yet the numbers of victims being trafficked continues to rise. National and international policing agencies have been reluctant to share information across borders which has resulted in confusion over who is responsible for dealing with such crimes. Misguided information and a lack of proper method to correctly identify victims of trafficking have not been introduced at national levels leaving many victims to be accused of illegally migration or people smuggling, which then results in deportation. By deporting victims, they are only exposed to the poor economic situations that caused them to search for better opportunities in the first place. The anti-trafficking solutions that governments have introduced have only diminished the human rights of individuals and have caused victims of low-socio economic conditions to resort to more dangerous methods of migrating. Without an international coordinated response where a clear definition of Human Trafficking can be adhered to globally we will only see the number of victims of trafficking rise. If governments can focus on countermeasures that have a human rights focus rather than a criminal justice framework it is likely this will be more effective in combating Human

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