I have been part of the anti-trafficking field since the mid-1990s, when I joined other colleagues to alert the world to the fact that UN and INGO staff and contractors were engaging in human trafficking in Bosnia.
Since then, as a human rights lawyer and later as a professor of law, I have experienced how the world’s response to trafficking has evolved. Despite three decades of learning, it continues to suffer from a multitude of problems.
The primary, overarching problem is the extent to which tangential political agendas drive law and policymaking on human trafficking. But here I’d like to discuss four other dynamics that also stand out as undermining progress. These are:
