International Prosecution Of Human Trafficking — Best Practices (ON-DEMAND VIDEO WEBINAR)

Your are wel­come to watch our third On-Demand Video Webi­nar on “Inter­na­tion­al Pros­e­cu­tion Of Human Traf­fick­ing — Best Practices”.

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 third of a series of three webinars :

Where are we now?
What can be done?
Best Practices

This webi­nar did focus on best prac­tices with a few very skilled and expe­ri­enced pre­sen­ters on this com­plex subject.
The webi­nar high­light­ed Holy See’s posi­tion giv­en by Mgr Marce­lo Sánchez Soron­do, the dif­fi­cul­ties of pros­e­cu­tions, the need of trans­paren­cy in the sup­ply chain as well as the urgency to act for stop­ping the abuse of young chil­dren through the web which affects more than 16 mil­lions chil­dren in Europe only…!

Speak­ers:

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

Sr. Mir­jam Beike, Dis­cus­sant, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the UN in Gene­va for the Sis­ters of Our Lady of Char­i­ty of the Good Shep­herd (RGS) — board mem­ber of RENATE and of the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Pre­ven­tion and Crim­i­nal Justice

Msgr. Marce­lo Sánchez Soron­do, Argen­tine Catholic bish­op, Chan­cel­lor of the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Social Sciences

Don For­tu­na­to Di Noto, Catholic Sicil­ian priest (Avola – 1963), Pres­i­dent of Meter Asso­ci­a­tion. In the dark and insid­i­ous part of the web he is engaged in the fight against the crime of pedophil­ia and child pornog­ra­phy. Mem­ber of the tech­ni­cal table of the Nation­al Obser­va­to­ry against pedophil­ia and online child pornog­ra­phy of the Ital­ian Pres­i­den­cy of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters. Mem­ber of the inter-insti­tu­tion­al tech­ni­cal Group for the Fight against Pedophil­ia and Child Pornog­ra­phy of the Sici­ly Region. Mem­ber of the Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mit­tee of the Ital­ian Postal and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Police

Pro­fes­sor Faus­to Pocar, Hon­orary Pres­i­dent, Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Human­i­tar­i­an Law, Pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Law at the Law Fac­ul­ty of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Milan. Judge of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for the for­mer Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Pres­i­dent of the Tri­bunal from 2005 to 2008. Judge of the Appeals Cham­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for Rwan­da (ICTR). In 2017, Pocar was appoint­ed Judge ad hoc of the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) in the case between Ukraine and the Russ­ian Federation

Mor­gane Nicot,UNODC Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Offi­cer, Team Leader, Knowl­edge Devel­op­ment / Human Traf­fick­ing & Migrant Smuggling

John McCarthy QC, Chair of the Syd­ney Catholic Arch­dio­cese Anti-Slav­ery Task­force Exec­u­tive Team, Aus­tralian Ambas­sador to the Holy See from 2012 to 2016. Pri­or to his ambas­sado­r­i­al appoint­ment, he was a Queens Coun­sel at the NSW Bar and a bar­ris­ter in Sydney

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

 

This third webi­nar explores some of the best prac­tices in com­bat­ing human traf­fick­ing, and how they can be shared and applied by judges and oth­er stake­hold­ers includ­ing civ­il society.

 

Msgr. Marce­lo Sánchez Soron­do

 

After the appeal of Pope Fran­cis in 2015 to the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Social Sci­ences to com­bat human traf­fick­ing and the new forms of slav­ery, the Acad­e­my arrived to two con­clu­sions which Msgr. Soron­do devel­ops in his speech. First­ly, there ought to be a clear­er def­i­n­i­tion of human traf­fick­ing, and pos­i­tive law instru­ments that defend and pro­mote the dig­ni­ty of the human body: the human body can­not be com­mer­cial­ized in any way. Sec­ond­ly, there has to be effec­tive sys­tems to assist the vic­tims in their recov­ery and rein­te­gra­tion in soci­ety. Impor­tant­ly, Msgr. Soron­do high­lights the fact that human traf­fick­ing must be con­sid­ered a crime against human­i­ty.

 

Prof. Faus­to Pocar

 

Already in 2000 Prof. Pocar’s posi­tion was that human traf­fick­ing is a crime against human­i­ty. Nev­er­the­less, human traf­fick­ing is not stat­ed as an inter­na­tion­al crime, but it is con­sid­ered an ordi­nary crime. In the light of this, Prof. Pocar stress­es the need for a clear def­i­n­i­tion of human traf­fick­ing at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el. He appeals to the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court to take on a case of human traf­fick­ing because a deci­sion from this Court would have an inter­na­tion­al echo that might sub­se­quent­ly change the law.

Prof. Pocar high­lights the spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, where uni­ver­sal­i­ty means that these prin­ci­ples are applic­a­ble through time. Hence, Prof. Pocar says that we need to clar­i­fy the crime of HT, in order to safe­guard the rights of future generations. 

 

Mor­gane Nicot

 

Three times more women are rep­re­sent­ed in the con­vic­tions for human traf­fick­ing than in oth­er forms of crimes, as is stat­ed in the UNODC 2020 Glob­al Report on Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons . Mor­gan Nicot pro­pos­es an inter­pre­ta­tion of this fact through the pre­sen­ta­tion of the case law analy­sis Female Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing for Sex­u­al Exploita­tion as Defen­dants (Decem­ber, 2020). In this report, Mor­gane Nicot and her team ana­lyzed cas­es where women vic­tims of traf­fick­ing were in fact pros­e­cut­ed for traf­fick­ing. The reports shows that a num­ber of vic­tims of traf­fick­ing are forced to par­tic­i­pate in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, and that this is used as a strat­e­gy by the traf­fick­ers to not get arrested.

These cas­es stress­es the impor­tance of vic­tim iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pri­or to pros­e­cu­tion, as States have pos­i­tive oblig­a­tions to pro­tect poten­tial vic­tims of traf­fick­ing, and also to iden­ti­fy them upon detec­tion. Hence, Mor­gane Nicot shows how the deci­sion to pros­e­cute poten­tial vic­tims of traf­fick­ing, while not pro­hib­it­ed per se in inter­na­tion­al law, may be at odds with State’s duty to take oper­a­tional mea­sures to pro­tect vic­tims of trafficking.

 

Bri­an Iselin

 

Bri­an Iselin urges us to take a look at the actu­al prob­lem of human traf­fick­ing and mod­ern slav­ery: the prob­lem con­fronting us is some­one who makes the moral and eco­nom­ic choice to exploit some­one else. Our cur­rent eco­nom­ic mod­el does not incen­tivize busi­ness to stop exploit­ing work­ers because there is no busi­ness advan­tage to treat peo­ple better.

Through the work of his orga­ni­za­tion Slave­Free­Trade, Bri­an Iselin pro­pos­es to tack­le the prob­lem of human traf­fick­ing by address­ing busi­ness men and women, and try­ing to make them want to change their prac­tices. By mak­ing the human rights per­for­mances linked to the bot­tom line of the com­pa­ny, there is an incen­tive to change the prac­tices towards decent work­places. Slave­Free­Trade pro­pos­es a real time assess­ment of the company’s work­places to eval­u­ate their human rights per­for­mances in real time, fol­low­ing the 10 Prin­ci­ples for Decent Work they devel­oped. As Bri­an Iselin says: “if you have a  work­place of peo­ple you should be human right com­pli­ant. You shouldn’t be in busi­ness if you’re not”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don For­tu­na­to di Noto

 

 

With more than 30 years of activ­i­ty, Don Fortunato’s Asso­ci­a­tion Meter mon­i­tors the Web and files thou­sands of com­plaints to the poli­cies all over the world on con­tent of child pornog­ra­phy and abuse. Child online pornog­ra­phy has explod­ed with the devel­op­ments of the Inter­net, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of the cur­rent pan­dem­ic. The orga­nized crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions impli­cat­ed in this vile activ­i­ty take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties of the Inter­net in terms of anonymi­ty, speed, and the bor­der­less nature of the cyber­space. Hence, child pornog­ra­phy has assumed an extreme­ly transna­tion­al character.

Con­sid­er­ing there is more than 18 mil­lion sex­u­al­ly abused chil­dren in Europe, Don Foruna­to says that we can­not stand by and do noth­ing, we have to react in the face of this issue that touch­es our chil­dren. An impor­tant call to be the Good Samar­i­tan and help car­ry these vic­tims, and allow them to live their childhood.