The Good: Little evidence of widespread trafficking

Agencies have identified 79 alleged victims of human trafficking in Scotland between April 2007 and March 2008, most of whom were women said to be forced into prostitution.

But the only Scottish human trafficking case brought to the courts collapsed in 2007 due to a lack of evidence.

The government-published report pointed out there had been some successful human trafficking prosecutions in England and Wales, resulting in some of the largest sentences in Europe.

The Bad: Lack of evidence isn't going stop politicians claiming a widespread problem

See article from dailyrecord.co.uk

Foreign police could be drafted in to help Scots forces bring human traffickers to justice, a report said today. The Scottish Government report suggested police from victims' countries could be seconded to help local officers in a bid to tackle the problem.

Injustice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said: This new research shows the scale of the problem and highlights the importance of genuine multi-agency working to ensure that victims of trafficking are given the support they need and those exploiting them are brought to justice.

And The Bollox: There are 32,000 Trafficked Women in Britain

See article from guardian.co.uk

Rahila Gupta, author of  Enslaved, The New British Slavery, claims in the Guardian today that there are at least 32,000 trafficked women in Britain. She writes:

"In Britain, it is estimated that 80% of the 80,000 women in prostitution are foreign nationals, most of whom have been trafficked".

Comment: Illiberal Liberals

3rd April 2009. Thanks to Alan

I never cease to be amazed by the way in which victim feminism makes this purportedly liberal newspaper so highly illiberal.

Gupta's piece is pretty typical. We have the "foreign = trafficked" myth. Then there's the inflated stats - 32,000 - or is it 80,000? - "trafficked" women.

Some time ago, Professor Julia O'Connell Davidson, who (a) is a real feminist and (b) knows what's she's talking about, exploded this bollox in a letter to the Guardian itself. O'Connell Davidson pointed out even the lower of these figures would amount to a number of traffickees larger than the entire workforce of Debenham's throughout the UK. Additionally, when she looked at the actual number of women found in raided brothels who said they had been trafficked as a proportion of all prostitutes in the establishments, she worked out that to arrive at the claimed figure of trafficked women there would pretty well have to be a knocking shop in every street.

Offsite: Red mist obscures red light statistics

5th April 2009. See article from guardian.co.uk by Belinda Brooks-Gordon

Campaigners too readily accept inflated figures for trafficked women, but we must base our policy on evidence, not emotion.

To argue there is a universal truth about trafficking does science, policy and trafficked people a disservice. The figure of 80,000 sex workers (which included women, men and transsexuals) in the UK was first suggested in 1999 in a Europap-UK briefing paper. Despite its speculative nature and the author Hilary Kinnell's refusal to make claims beyond her data, the estimate of 80,000 has been widely reported as a firm figure, often applying only to women and often in the context of claims that the sex industry is expanding rapidly (which cannot be the case if the figure of 80,000 has remained the same for 10 years).

Herein lies the difference between Rahila Gupta, the legion of no doubt well-intentioned commentators on this subject, and serious academics. The academic body of work takes time, has to be reviewed and scrutinised and as a result the media often loses interest by the time a piece is published. The work will be debated in conferences and seminars and flaws are ironed out. Whereas the truth so confidently exhibited by Gupta, like Nick Davies's flat earth news stories, go from press release to press agency to newsroom to Home Office to press release and so on. The result of such hyper-inflation is policy that spreads resources too thinly sometimes missing the really needy; and over-zealous campaigning that criminalises clients, friends, maids and receptionists makes women less safe. When looking for a needle in haystack, it doesn't make sense to keep making the haystack bigger. We have reached a crisis of sorts. And at a time of crisis, when there is a desperation to find the right policy, then a return to the slow, steady grind of the academe is necessary.

...Read full article

Anti prostitution campaigners at Ruhama have claimed that during 2007-08, there were 341 women directly assisted by the group, including 100 women trafficked into Ireland for prostitution, the majority from Nigeria. Six of the women were under the age of 18.

Spokesperson Geraldine Rowley said: We supported 341 women who have been affected by prostitution in Ireland and of those 55 were new referrals who were trafficked into Ireland. Seven of those were trafficked into Northern Ireland.

There have been 151 investigations by gardai over the past 18 months into alleged trafficking but no prosecutions have taken place.

Gardai said last night that 23 potential victims of trafficking had been referred to the Garda National Immigration Bureau in 2008 and, where appropriate, these were being investigated with police forces from other jurisdictions such as the UK and the Netherlands.

The United Nations claimed there could be around 270,000 victims of human trafficking in the European Union and urged greater efforts to combat the illegal trade.

Authorities in Europe were aware of only a tiny proportion of the victims, said the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), estimating there were 30 times more people affected than were known about.

The claims came on European Anti-Trafficking Day on Sunday, which aims to draw attention to the plight of victims of the trade who are forced to work illegally after being smuggled across borders.

Antonio Maria Costa, UNODC executive director, highlighted few human traffickers were caught and blamed police for not taking enough action. Less than one in 100,000 people were convicted for human trafficking in Europe, he said in a statement, adding this was less than for rare crimes like kidnapping. Perhaps police are not finding the traffickers and victims because they are not looking for them, he added.

Despite a highly trumpeted New York State law in 2007 that enacted tough penalties for sex or labor trafficking, very few people have been prosecuted since it went into effect, according to state statistics.

In New York State, there have been 18 arrests and one conviction for trafficking since the law was signed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer and took effect in November 2007, according to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. There is one case pending in Manhattan, one in Queens and two in the Bronx.

The situation is not all that different in New Jersey or in roughly 30 states that have laws against human trafficking — defined as using fraud or force to exploit a person for sex or labor. A federal law passed in 2000 with lifetime prison penalties has resulted in 196 cases with convictions against 419 people, according to statistics from the United States Department of Justice.

The scale of those numbers contrasts starkly with the 14,500 to 17,500 people the State Department estimates are brought into the United States each year for forced labor or sex.

The exaggeration of numbers of trafficked sex workers and sex slaves has been going on for over a decade. Much of this stems from a general misunderstanding about the differences between sex work per se, sex slavery and trafficking…a misunderstanding amplified by the fact that in many countries, ALL of these activities are crimes, and ALL are under the gaze of a migration-sensitive and politically astute police force, media and government trying to jockey for brownie points among a difficult public landscape of financial crisis and celebrity sensationalism. Career politicians, conservative feminists and desperate journalists have exploited the public's penchant for stories about sex and the ethnic other to replicated the lie that all migrant sex workers are trafficked sex slaves.

...Read full article

One small section of a crowd of 40,000

David Beckham might not be going to the World Cup in South Africa this year, but 40,000 hookers will be. That is literally what a headline on the NBC sports website claims: 40,000 hookers making their way to South Africa for World Cup.

Other media outlets have been a bit more PC: 40,000 prostitutes to enter South Africa, says the UK Daily Telegraph; 40,000 prostitutes bound for South Africa, says the New York Daily News. Apparently many of these hookers will be trafficked into South Africa against their will, forced into a life of grimy prostitution for the satisfaction of drunken football fans.

...Read the full article

The United States has added Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Brunei, Laos and Maldives to its human trafficking watch list, accusing them of failing to prevent women from being forced into prostitution.

The move opens the way for the United States to cut off some civilian assistance, although it usually functions as a symbolic means to pressure countries to take action.

The report claims 12.3 million people were the victims of trafficking in 2009-2010. Previous estimates have been widely discredited, as the US seems to consider nearly all prostitutes in the world as 'trafficked'.

Bangladesh, China, India, Micronesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka remained on the list, unchanged from a year earlier. North Korea, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea remained at the bottom level of countries that do not even meet the minimum standards on human trafficking. Malaysia stays on the list but escaped the lowest category of countries that do not meet minimum standards.

The State Department recognized improvements in Pakistan, which was taken off the watch list. Taiwan was upgraded and listed as fully compliant in efforts against human trafficking after starting new services for victims. Australia, New Zealand and South Korea were also listed as fully compliant.

Explaining the downgrade for Singapore, the report said that some women from China, the Philippines and Thailand are tricked into coming to the city-state with promises of legitimate employment and coerced into the sex trade.

The State Department said that Thailand was a source, destination and transit point for trafficking, with ethnic minorities and citizens of neighboring countries at particular risk of sexual abuse or forced labor.

A new report by Amnesty International (and amongst others, nutters from Poppy) has revealed that no one has ever been convicted for human trafficking in Scotland, despite dozens of arrests of people in connection with prostitution.

Two years ago, 35 people were arrested during raids in which 15 suspected trafficked women were discovered. However, the report, Wrong Kind Of Victim?, says: Of the 35 who were arrested, 18 were convicted but for offences related to immigration or prostitution. [Presumably because they weren't actually being coerced, but were working consensually and had taken liberties with prostitution law and immigration procedures]

The rather selective human rights organisation has now called for closer examination of the reasons behind Scotland's failure to secure any trafficking convictions. Amnesty's Scotland programme director, John Watson, said more than 100 people were convicted of trafficking in England and Wales.

The UK-wide report said measures to protect victims of people smuggling are not fit for purpose and accused the British Government of breaching its obligations under European law to protect trafficked people and uphold minimum standards of care.

The report recommends that information-sharing protocols between the UK's police and law enforcement agencies be developed to improve the likelihood of securing convictions of traffickers in Scotland. And the Scottish Government should establish protocols with the UK Government to collect and publish data on the extent of human trafficking north of the border.

The organisation also called for the provision of safe accommodation and support for trafficked people across Scotland.