The trafficking of human beings has been subjected to a huge amount
of attention in modern times. It is one of the fastest growing criminal
businesses, second only in the world to arms and drugs trafficking. It
has been called a kind of ‘international terrorism’ – a multifaceted
problem that touches on issues of human rights, inequality,
discrimination, the rule of law, crime control, law enforcement,
corruption, economic deprivation and migration. It can affect all states
whether they are countries of origin, transit or destination. As such
it is clearly an international problem that requires a concerted
response utilizing a multidisciplinary approach.
The
UAE’s free market economy experienced a phenomenal growth in a very
short time span. As a result of its socio-economic developments, it has
become a main destination for traders, investors, recruiters, tourists,
labourers (legal and illegal), and even for crooks and criminals. The
increased labour demand of a prosperous state lured criminals to engage
in the lucrative trade of trafficking individuals on a scale never
experienced before. The UAE is a country of destination for many victims
of trafficking; the majority being women who are trafficked for the
purpose of commercial sexual and labour exploitation. According to the
Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2009, issued by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, the largest proportion of
trafficking victims identified by the State authorities in the UAE
between 2003 and 2007 were women. The Report claims that all women
identified in the years 2005 and 2006 were trafficked for sexual
exploitation.
In response to the growing national interest in the
issue, and in the absence of an effective law directly addressing
trafficking, the UAE government passed Federal Law 51: Combating Human
Trafficking Crimes in 2006 and they established the National Committee
to Combat Human Trafficking in 2007. Thereafter the government began to
pay special attention to the problem of trafficking, and they recognised
the importance both of measuring its scope and of understanding the
nature of victims’ experiences. A their national report on combating
trafficking emphasized that ‘the UAE believes that the more informed we
are about the victims of this terrible crime, the source countries,
transit routes and methodologies of traffickers, the more the government
can do to prevent the crime’. The UAE is party to the most
comprehensive international legal instrument on human trafficking, the
UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons
Especially Women and Children, which came into force on 25 December
2003.
Reports talk of success in curbing trafficking, but the
phenomenon does not appear to be reducing: rather it appears to be
increasing according to various national and international data. What
has gone wrong? Why are the existing mechanisms insufficient? The UAE
must seek answers to these questions. Is it not time to re-investigate
the problem and to establish alternative mechanisms? The
counter-trafficking initiatives based on a law and order approach have
yielded unsatisfactory results.
There is an urgent need,
therefore, for new strategies and practices to fight against this
atrocity and to provide care and support for trafficked victims so that
they can more easily re-integrate into society.
An Alternative Approach
Human
trafficking is a human rights violation, and it is one that can result
in a series of further abuses such as debt-bondage, forced labour in
slavery-like conditions, even rape, torture and murder. Treating human
beings as commodities to be bought and sold is a violation of an
individual’s most basic rights to freedom, autonomy and human dignity.
Freedom and justice become the sweet dreams of all individuals who are
forced or tricked into serving others against their will – in other
words, who are trafficked for the purpose of exploitation. The problem,
therefore, demands a solution that not merely punishes the perpetrator
of the human rights violation but seriously addresses its root causes.
Human
trafficking is a global phenomenon; it occurs at local, regional, and
international levels. It should be seen as resulting from a combination
of various political, social, economic and legal failings. It is a
product of larger socio-economic and political forces that feed the
phenomenon and automatically render trafficked people vulnerable to
abuse and exploitation in the first place. To tackle the problem in an
effective manner, it is necessary to take account of the wide range of
circumstances and conditions that, in effect, victimize women (and
children) and make them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and
trafficking. The trafficking of persons must be seen as more than simply
a crime of trading human beings as commodities; it needs to be viewed
equally as a labour problem, a migration problem, a human rights
problem, a law enforcement problem, and a political problem. A human
rights approach to the struggle is capable of providing mechanisms for a
holistic analysis covering all these problem areas.
It is an
accepted fact that poverty, unjustly unequal educational and employment
opportunities, and discrimination contribute to the vulnerability of
persons to trafficking. A human rights approach to the struggle against
human trafficking would aim to identify its root causes as part of a
holistic approach, combining the insights and aspirations of all law
enforcement bodies, the NGOs and INGOs, civil society, professionals,
governments and international communities. It is pointed out, human
rights law provides a conceptual framework for addressing the root
causes of trafficking and for encouraging a more pro-active approach to
dealing with this problem instead of relying on the traditional
assumption that such issues are solely within the province of broader
development policy. International human rights law provides an important
normative framework within which new strategies can be drawn up. More
significantly, the human rights environment offers legal and political
opportunities for the disenfranchised to begin to claim their rights and
thereby bring state responsibility in this area into sharper focus.
Thus the concept of the human rights based approach is built on
fundamental principles and values such as indivisibility, universality
and inalienability, interdependence and inter-relatedness,
non-discrimination and equality, participation and inclusion; and
accountability and the rule of law. These principles and values, he
insists, guarantee a human rights legal framework that can achieve ‘the
criminalization of trafficking, the prosecution of traffickers, the
assistance and protection of victims, and, most importantly, provide a
greater attention to the root causes of trafficking’.
The Need for Integrated Policies in the UAE
Many
national and international reports on trafficking in persons have
estimated that thousands of women from sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern
Europe, South and East Asia, Iraq, Iran, and Morocco may be victims of
sex trafficking in the UAE. These migrant women have often been brought
into the country under false promises of working in the service sectors
(hotels, night clubs, massage centres and hospitals) or as domestic
servants. However, upon arrival, the traffickers have failed to provide
the promised jobs, and instead they have confiscated passports and
forced the women to work as prostitutes in order to meet their travel
and living expenses. It is a heinous crime, and its perpetrators should
be severely dealt with. Socio-economic reform is imperative demanding
political will and international co-cooperation. A rights-based approach
would seek to integrate the principles of the international human
rights system into the processes involved in the struggle against
trafficking. This will only happen, though, if human rights can be made
central to policy-making and they are accepted as the political choice.
Is it not time to re-think the methodology employed in the struggle
against trafficking by integrating this holistic approach into policies
and programmes?
The task of combating trafficking must be
approached at several levels, all backed by strong national law
enforcement. The UAE’s action to combat trafficking has so far
concentrated on prohibition and prosecution. Protection of the victim
has been only a secondary consideration, and the causes and the
consequences of trafficking have mostly been ignored. In order to
implement human rights approach prevention, prosecution and victim
protection must be given equal emphasis. As critics suggest, measures to
counter trafficking are needed in areas that lie beyond the criminal
law so that violations of human rights are prevented. These other areas
include labour law, migration law, external relations, and development
policy. Generally understood as having a broad application within
international human rights law, the non-discrimination principle could
be well-suited to a human rights analysis of the root causes of
trafficking, i.e. poverty, inequality in both educational and employment
opportunities, violence against women, etc.
What they needed now
in the UAE is a more fundamental review of counter-trafficking policy so
that at long last the offensive can be taken against the traffickers.
The review needs to be conducted alongside the NGOs, INGOs, civil
society and the international community, with a rigorous independent
assessment of the potential long-term effects of the current strategy.
Having ensured that existing measures do not operate contrary to the
desired goal of long-term prevention, attention can then be directed at
deeper, systemic problems. However, efforts to combat trafficking in UAE
will achieve little unless the fundamental root causes are adequately
addressed. The cycle of trafficking and re-trafficking will only be
broken once a holistic approach is adopted. Time is right, the choice is
theirs.
For its part, the land armament specialist French Nexter hopes, according to the newspaper Les Echos be selected at this event by the United Arab Emirates for a tender for 700 armored wheeled vehicles, an amount which could approach 2 billion.
