International Prosecution Of Human Trafficking — What can be done? (ON-DEMAND VIDEO WEBINAR)

Your are wel­come to watch our sec­ond On-Demand Video Webi­nar on “Inter­na­tion­al Pros­e­cu­tion Of Human Traf­fick­ing — What can be done?”.

The Ambas­sador of the Order of Mal­ta to mon­i­tor and com­bat traf­fick­ing in per­sons orga­nizes a series of 3 webi­na­rs on the inter­na­tion­al pros­e­cu­tion of human traf­fick­ing. This series of 3 webi­na­rs will assess the imple­men­ta­tion of this treaty, raise aware­ness on the need to effec­tive­ly pros­e­cute traf­fick­ers, and pro­mote action at the inter­na­tion­al, region­al and nation­al levels.

This webi­nar is the sec­ond of a series of three webinars :

1. Where are we now?
2. What can be done?
3. Best Prac­tices?

This webi­nar did focus on what can be done with a few very skilled and expe­ri­enced pre­sen­ters on this com­plex subject.

The webi­nar high­light­ed how dif­fi­cult it is today to pros­e­cute human traf­fick­ing crim­i­nals: accord­ing to Kevin High­land, first Inde­pen­dent Anti-Slav­ery Com­mis­sion­er for the UK gov­ern­ment, less than one in 1,250 traf­fick­ing cas­es is cur­rent­ly pros­e­cut­ed. Accord­ing to him, it is time to put in place at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el, a plan on the same scale as the one being launched to fight glob­al warm­ing. Very few resources are devot­ed by gov­ern­ments to fight traf­fick­ing, which affects more than 45 mil­lion peo­ple worldwide.

Speak­ers:

Pro­fes­sor Michel Veuthey, Mod­er­a­tor, Ambas­sador of the Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta to Mon­i­tor and Com­bat Traf­fick­ing in Persons

Ambas­sador Elis­a­beth Tichy, Chair of the Unit­ed Nations Human Rights Coun­cil since Decem­ber 2019, Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Aus­tria to the Unit­ed Nations Office at Gene­va since Decem­ber 2017, for­mer Direc­tor Gen­er­al for Legal and Con­sular Affairs at the Fed­er­al Min­istry for Europe, Inte­gra­tion and For­eign Affairs. Ambas­sador Tichy-Fisslberg­er has been the first Aus­tri­an Nation­al Coor­di­na­tor on Com­bat­ting Human Traf­fick­ing as well as Pres­i­dent of the Aus­tri­an Task Force on Com­bat­ting Human Traf­fick­ing since 2009

Kevin Hyland, 30 years expe­ri­ence of police inves­ti­ga­tion. From 2010, Head for the estab­lish­ment of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Human Traf­fick­ing response in UK and from 2014 to May 2018, first Inde­pen­dent Anti-Slav­ery Com­mis­sion­er for the UK gov­ern­ment, from 2018, Ireland’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Coun­cil of Europe Inde­pen­dent Group of Experts for Traf­fick­ing (Gre­ta). Cur­rent­ly Chair of the Lead­er­ship Group for Respon­si­ble Recruit­ment (the lever­age of major inter­na­tion­al brands to pro­mote respon­si­ble recruit­ment prac­tices in the way that migrant work­ers are recruit­ed) and senior advi­sor for the San­ta Mar­ta Group (Church and Law Enforce­ment Com­bat­ting Mod­ern Slavery)

Jen­nifer Richard­son, Direc­tor of the Provin­cial Anti-Human Traf­fick­ing Coor­di­na­tion Office housed in the Ontario Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty and Social Ser­vices (MCSS, estab­lished to over­see and coor­di­nate the imple­men­ta­tion of Ontario’s Strat­e­gy to End Human Traf­fick­ing across gov­ern­ment) — for­mer HT victim

Peter Wil­iams, Prin­ci­pal Advi­sor on Mod­ern Slav­ery for Inter­na­tion­al Jus­tice Mis­sion (IJM), lead­ing IJM’s cen­ter of excel­lence in address­ing slav­ery and devel­op­ing glob­al­ly applic­a­ble best prac­tices from IJM’s exten­sive pro­gram­mat­ic expe­ri­ence world­wide. Peter has ten years’ counter-slav­ery expe­ri­ence with IJM in the field, hav­ing led two IJM field offices in com­bat­ting mod­ern slav­ery. Peter has a Ba/LLB(Hons) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land, New Zealand and began his career as a Crown Pros­e­cu­tor in Auckland

Bri­an Iselin, for­mer Aus­tralian sol­dier and fed­er­al agent, Founder of Gene­va-based Slave Free Trade, a non­prof­it work­ing on lever­ag­ing the might of the blockchain to rid the world of slave labor

 20 years after the adop­tion of the Paler­mo Pro­to­col, this webi­nar address­es the ques­tions and issues relat­ed to the imple­men­ta­tion of this Pro­to­col, and some of the best prac­tices to pros­e­cute human traf­fick­ing. The speak­ers offer dif­fer­ent approach­es and rec­om­men­da­tions on how to com­bat the glob­al prob­lem of human traf­fick­ing and mod­ern slavery.

  Ambas­sador Elis­a­beth TICHY – FISSLBERGER

            Using a case of human traf­fick­ing tak­ing place through Latvia, Ire­land and African coun­tries, Ambas­sador Tichy-Fisslberg­er high­lights the inher­ent com­plex­i­ty of the human traf­fick­ing phe­nom­e­non: the cas­es fall often under dif­fer­ent laws, they have a trans­bor­der char­ac­ter, and are dif­fi­cult to detect. How­ev­er, the legal tools exist, what must be done bet­ter is the imple­men­ta­tion of exist­ing legal instru­ments, uni­ver­sal, region­al and domes­tic. The Ambas­sador pro­motes a “whole soci­ety” approach, where dif­fer­ent actors (e.g. Gov­ern­ments, health ser­vices, police) works, fol­low­ing the “4 P’s” of human traf­fick­ing: pre­ven­tion, pro­tec­tion, pros­e­cu­tion and partnership.

  Jen­nifer Richardson

            Jen­nifer Richard­son is the Direc­tor of the Ontario Provin­cial Anti-Traf­fick­ing Coor­di­na­tion Office, in Cana­da. Through her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence of human traf­fick­ing, she presents here her work in the com­bat against human traf­fick­ing. The Ontario Anti-Human Traf­fick­ing Strat­e­gy 2020–2025 is Canada’s largest anti-traf­fick­ing strat­e­gy, that priv­i­leges a cross-gov­ern­men­tal action plan focused on four areas: rais­ing aware­ness, pro­tect vic­tims and ear­ly inter­ven­tion, sup­port sur­vivors, and hold offend­ers account­able. A focus on the needs of Indige­nous peo­ple is also an impor­tant com­po­nent of this strategy.

  Kevin Hyland, OBE

            Kevin Hyland asks us to start act­ing on com­bat­ting human traf­fick­ing. We must focus on action and imple­men­ta­tion of the legal tools we have, and not cre­ate new ones. All actors of soci­ety have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to act, be it Gov­ern­ments, law enforce­ment or civ­il soci­ety. The respons­es to human traf­fick­ing must be trans­par­ent and account­able, that is to say these respons­es must be hon­est and clear­ly defined. Kevin Hyland also high­lights the impor­tance of faith-based orga­ni­za­tions (e.g. San­ta Mar­ta Group) in this com­bat, in estab­lish­ing trust between the vic­tims and the helpers, and ulti­mate­ly with the authorities.

 Peter Williams

            Peter Williams brings us his first-hand expe­ri­ence, after hav­ing work­ing on field pro­grams of the Inter­na­tion­al Jus­tice Mis­sion in Cam­bo­dia. Peter Williams stress­es the impor­tance of the first respon­der effect, par­tic­u­lar­ly the qual­i­ty of the first con­tact between the vic­tims and the author­i­ties. Indeed, this first approach is cru­cial in iden­ti­fy­ing a poten­tial vic­tim of human traf­fick­ing. Also, Peter Williams shows that excel­lent after­care and recov­ery pro­gram for the vic­tims is one of the great­est fac­tors of suc­cess in the pros­e­cu­tion of human traf­fick­ing cases.

  Bri­an Iselin

            The founder of slave­free­trade advo­cates for a demand-ori­ent­ed approach, instead of an over reliance on law enforce­ment. Indeed, sup­ply is as good as infi­nite, but a reduc­tion in demand can have con­sid­er­able effects on the mar­ket. Pros­e­cu­tion of human traf­fick­ing is often not the best out­come, and should not be seen as the best option. Bri­an Iselin pro­motes the use of “Right­sTech” in com­bat­ting mod­ern slav­ery. “Right­sTech” is a tech­nol­o­gy used for pro­mot­ing, pro­tect­ing, enabling and extend­ing human rights. Through this, the busi­ness­es are incen­tivized to not exploit, as their bot­tom-line become depen­dent on their human rights performances.