Looking beyond the sex industry

"Often the first thing that springs to mind when 'demand' is mentioned in relation to trafficking is the contentious debate about the rights and wrongs of prostitution," says Shivaun Scanlan, the Senior Adviser on Anti-Trafficking at the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). "But the sex industry is only one aspect of trafficking. Trafficked persons are exploited for many other purposes, such as domestic, agricultural or construction work."

One of the first questions that arise in this discussion is whether there is a demand specifically for trafficked persons' labour or services. Professor Julia O'Connell Davidson of Nottingham University and Dr Bridget Anderson of Oxford University are co-authors of the research paper "Trafficking - a demand led problem?" and were speakers at a special session on demand in trafficking at the ODIHR's annual human rights conference in Warsaw this October. They explain that the migration and work experiences of many people range along a continuum in terms of the types and degree of force and deceit involved. This makes it difficult to determine which persons are trafficked.

What is clear is that there is demand for exploitable workers in many countries, which is sometimes satisfied through trafficking. Such workers are often undocumented migrants whom employers are more able to control, whether trafficked or not, because they have fewer options. Employers also find it easier to justify exploiting undocumented migrants, seeing their actions as "giving opportunities" rather than abusing rights.

Who, then, is generating this demand for exploitable workers? It can be people from many different social spheres, who do not necessarily fit the stereotype of the mafia member or gang master. It can be families who want a live-in child carer, or farmers looking for short-term labourers for harvesting. Indeed, the range of people involved in the chain of trafficking, either directly or indirectly, is one of the main challenges in tackling trafficking from the demand side.

"There is very little relationship between the different forms of demand - for agricultural and construction labour, household labour, cheap goods, human organs - which makes this a policy-maker's nightmare," says Davidson.

Creating informal markets

Government policies can contribute to the development of exploitative practices in unexpected ways. For example, in some European countries social services have introduced "cash-for-care" schemes for the elderly and disabled. Such schemes remove the responsibility from local or national authorities to provide care services, instead giving people allowances so that they can make their own arrangements.

"On the one hand, such systems can give people more choice in deciding on their own care provision. On the other, they encourage the development of an informal market, where private arrangements are common," explains Anderson. "Migrant workers, especially undocumented workers, soak up the bottom end of this market, and are the ones who are particularly vulnerable to exploitative practices."

How to reduce demand

If the demand for services can be adequately filled in legal ways, the market within which traffickers operate will be less attractive. However, while providing legal opportunities for migrant workers can go some way to reducing the demand for trafficked workers, this is not enough to protect vulnerable workers, as recent cases of the exploitation of EU nationals has shown.

It is therefore important that governments recognize where demand lies, and consider altering both the labour and migration policies that create 'bottlenecks' in the market and leave people vulnerable to exploitation. At the same time, they need to ensure better regulation and enforcement of minimum labour standards in sectors prone to exploitation as part of their preventive work.

"We need a range of action, from informing vulnerable workers of their rights - and even undocumented workers have rights - to working with employers to prevent exploitation and holding them up to fair labour standards," explains Scanlan. "We also need to challenge exploitation and abuse through judicial processes alongside mediation, collective action and unionization."

Focusing on demand highlights the cross-over between anti-trafficking and migrants' rights issues, and the need to have a broader approach to anti-trafficking. In 2007, the ODIHR will be meeting with organizations focusing on migrants' rights protection as a first step towards integrating good practices in protecting migrants' rights into the ODIHR's anti-trafficking activities.