OSCE Special Representative calls for more research on links between trafficking and globalization

LONDON, 7 March 2011 – More research into how the demand for cheap labour in the global market affects trafficking in human beings is needed to strengthen anti-trafficking efforts, the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, said in a public lecture today at the London School of Economics.

“Trafficking is becoming a systemic component of certain segments of the labour market, in which illegal or criminal practices are increasingly used. We need to better understand what factors foster the mechanism, to be able to better prevent it and combat it,” she said.

“Trafficking flourishes in many labour-intensive and poorly regulated sectors, especially agriculture, construction, domestic work, and restaurants and hospitality. The demand for cheap labour is endemic in some sectors. Organized crime takes advantage of this situation to provide unpaid labour in slavery-like conditions, performed by migrant workers in a situation of debt bondage and subjugation.”

Labour exploitation is a massive-scale phenomenon that often targets women, Giammarinaro said. Women and girls often are exploited in households where they fall prey to unscrupulous employers who take advantage of their unpaid work. They are often forced to work long hours and to be constantly at their employers' disposal. Some are forbidden to have social contacts and are subject to starvation and other forms of abuse.

Giammarinaro also called on practitioners to interpret national legislation criminalizing trafficking in human beings according to the broad definition provided by the United Nations Trafficking Protocol, which encompasses all forms of coercion, including the abuse of a position of vulnerability, and all forms of exploitation.

“It is still a challenge for many practitioners, for example, to realize that a person can be kept in a situation of extreme exploitation even if she or he is not locked in an apartment or in a workplace. People can be subjugated through subtle means of coercion including the abuse of a situation of multiple dependencies deriving from social isolation, lack of knowledge of the language, fear of prosecution and deportation as an irregular migrant,” she concluded.