MORE THAN 60 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude”, the spread of a strikingly modern form of an ancient practice shows how far from reach that aspiration remains. By harnessing advances in technology and exploiting the international mobility of the age, human trafficking is now thought to be worth between $7 and $12 billion annually, making it the third most lucrative illicit business in the world.
It is estimated that about 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders – 80 per cent of them are women and girls, and up to half are children.
Though gaps remain in our understanding of the problem in Ireland, in recent years a picture has taken shape of a grave and growing challenge. Last year the US state department named Ireland for the first time as a destination country for victims of trafficking, while a disturbing report on the sex industry by the Immigrant Council this week gave further insights, depicting a significant and lucrative shadow trade that leaves its victims open to rape, exploitation and abuse.
Reforming prostitution laws is a perennially controversial discussion, but the report poses searching questions surrounding the relationship between sex trafficking and prostitution generally, and about the need for a broader view that lays emphasis on demand as well as supply. In many countries, recent years have seen a shift in thinking away from the liberalising current of the 1990s. The British government is considering stricter prostitution laws, while both Sweden and Norway have criminalised buying sex and decriminalised selling it.
It may have been late in grasping the severity of the trafficking problem, but the Government has in the past two years shown a welcome willingness to begin confronting it. Last year it made trafficking a crime, and a specialist unit has been established in the Department of Justice. A “reflection and recovery” period can now be granted to suspected victims, and this can be followed by a six-month renewable residence permit.
But serious concerns remain, and they should be heeded. Just three women have been granted the recovery period since it was introduced last June, and support agencies are concerned that others who may have been trafficked are being arrested and detained.
There remains a lack of clarity about the process for granting such protection, and about the type of supports that can be made available once it is granted. As the Human Rights Commission and others have pointed out, the insistence that the granting of six-month residence permits be conditional on a victims willingness to co-operate with the Garda should be reviewed. Humanitarian considerations, based on the personal circumstances of the victim, should be taken into account.Such supports are vital tools in the fight against trafficking. As other countries have found, putting in place effective services to help victims has been a starting point for uncovering the scale and nature of the trafficking problem. Until we do likewise, we cannot begin to think of eradication.