Stop the Traffic 2 Conference Closing remarks (2003)

Stop the Traffic 2 Conference
Closing remarks

 

Sally Moyle, Director, Sex Discrimination Unit, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

2003

 

Thank you all for your genuine engagement in the discussions today. I believe we are participating in a very useful process.

 

Today we have heard about demand and supply factors – and about the push and pull factors behind trafficking.

As Kathleen pointed out this morning this conference attempts to reflect the trafficking trail, to view the process from the perspective of the women involved. I am indebted to her for her clear discussion of the bravery and strong agency of trafficked women. In a context where it is very difficult for trafficked women to speak for themselves, because of the nature of trafficking and their own experiences, it is very important for us continually to carry with us in all our work a central recognition of the lives and circumstances of the women concerned. For me this is the central message of all the discussions today.

Trafficking is a very complex phenomenon. To many of us it is also very mysterious.

Of course, as a sophisticated criminal undertaking, there are obvious areas of ignorance – in particular, how do traffickers operate? Who are they? How are women recruited, how are they transported? How many women suffer from this gross violation of their human rights? Logistical issues around trafficking such as these raise questions that remain unanswered.

I’d remind us all again of Paul Holmes’s point here, though – that trafficking is a very obvious offence – it is not invisible. To the extent that we are ignorant of the logistics, it indicates our lack of commitment to look.

Our keynote speakers this morning have shed a great deal of light on some of these logistical questions. As recognised experts on the circumstances and dynamics of trafficking internationally, each of the keynotes has given us a very clear picture of trafficking. I am grateful to each of them for their contributions. They allowed us to start this conference from a position of strength.

In addition to filling us in on the practical facts of trafficking, Paul Holmes gave us an insight into the investigative imperatives of policing trafficking. Many of us working on trafficking issues would be unfamiliar with the requirements of the criminal justice system and our expectations of police in dealing with trafficked women may be unrealistic.

Before we can successfully engage and work with police on these issues, we need to have a sound grasp of just what police can and cannot do. For example, I believe police can and should make available support, counselling and welfare services to victims of trafficking and should themselves be able to play a supportive “victim -first” role. As Paul Holmes said, victims of trafficking need power, time, space, information and advice in order to participate fully in the legal process and their own recovery.

Years ago, some defence lawyers used to try to impugn the testimony of the alleged victim if she had received any sort of counselling support while waiting to give her evidence – this could be several months or even years at times. They attempted to argue that the counselling would interfere with her correct recollection of the events and would taint her evidence. I sincerely hope that the days when such tactics could be tried on are past, and that no-one would attempt to question the evidence of a woman who is a witness in a trafficking prosecution today on the basis that she has received support and counselling.

Defence lawyers may also try to challenge the victim witnesses’ evidence on the basis that it has been secured by the offer of inducements such as a visa or various other forms of support.

Paul Holmes has made it very clear that these arguments can always, in his experience, be addressed by police and prosecution being completely transparent in their operations, by ensuring investigators do not control the offer of support or visas directly and by being entirely professional and completely frank in their dealings with the witnesses.

Police do need to secure evidence, and as quickly as possible. A witness will need to relive the trauma of the events she suffered by giving detailed and rigorous evidence. She may well need to be interviewed or examined by at least one, perhaps more, medical or other expert professionals.

These may seem harsh expectations of women who may be extremely traumatised. But we do need to recognise that the legal system has legitimate expectations in a criminal prosecution to ensure each accused has a fair trial.

There are other areas of law involving very vulnerable witnesses where policing is informed by and takes account of the very real need to protect the rights of the alleged victim – child sexual abuse or sexual assault, to name two. The dynamics of these offences differ from that of trafficking, but the similarities are significant enough to give us an example of how it is at least possible for professionals from different areas of expertise and with different priorities to find a balance and work together to ensure a fair and rigorous trial for the accused while respecting the rights of the alleged victim.

I am grateful to Paul Holmes for his significant insights into the practicalities of a human rights perspective in investigating and prosecuting trafficking.

In addition to logistical questions about trafficking, I believe there are even greater, more important questions that continue to mystify around trafficking. Trafficking often involves vulnerable - that is poor, unskilled and uneducated, men and boys; but generally it is accepted that more often it involves women and girls. How do women find themselves in situations of such vulnerability that they become trafficked? How could people behave so atrociously to fellow human beings?

A gender and human rights framework allows us to shed some light on these issues.

All trafficking is enabled by the power inequities that allow people to dehumanise their fellows and to deal with them as commodities. Gender and human rights frameworks acknowledge these imbalances and work to counteract them.

First we need to remember that trafficking affects men and boys, and affects them differently to women and girls. A proper gender perspective will separately consider the issue for men and women.

However, a gender approach recognises that trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is primarily about women.

Following again through the trafficking journey, through the trafficking ‘life cycle’ if you like, it is clear that gender is a significant issue at each stage.

At its most basic, women are seen as less important than men. PM Nair this morning alluded to female infanticide and foeticide. This is a significant issue in many parts of our region and globally.

In China, for example, there are regions where there are now 119 boys for every 100 girls. This is an extraordinary demographic skew. It indicates clearly that women are not valued, and it also obviously will have significant effects on the dynamics of trafficking down the track.

This is an extreme example of what I am suggesting but it is clear to me that women continue to be seriously disadvantaged compared to men around the world. Globally, women are poorer than men, generally less well educated and overrepresented amongst refugee populations.

These factors mean that women are more vulnerable generally. They are therefore overrepresented amongst the primary targets of traffickers.

When we look at push factors, as has been suggested today by Sallie Yea, violence is a significant push factor and so are the wishes of the family. In both these areas, again, women are particularly vulnerable.

Obviously gender is also an issue when we look at trafficking for sexual exploitation particularly. The sexuality of women and sexuality of men are both issues that need to be considered in understanding trafficking for sexual exploitation – demand issues.

Understanding these issues means that we will continue to have trafficked, tricked and exploited women engaged in the sex industry so long as men with money think it is sexually stimulating to rape and exploit vulnerable and intimidated young women. Sallie Yea and Ma Mah’s talks this afternoon give us an insight into these issues. We will not come to grips with trafficking if we cannot come to grips with this.

A gender perspective also means we need to take account of how gender intersects with social and economic class and with race.

Race issues are certainly embedded in any consideration of trafficking. However, these issues are flexible - they can change with opportunity. Look at the monstrous increase in trafficking of women from Eastern Europe over the last decade while those who exploit those trafficked women are able to 'racialise' them - to use their race or culture to disadvantage them. Race and in particular the way in which race and gender connect is an important issue in understanding trafficking.

In the same way poverty and class are also inextricably linked to trafficking.

Very often we talk about trafficked women being vulnerable, in fact to the extent that we often overlook the agency of the women concerned. It’s true that by definition, the choices that women who are trafficked or at risk or being trafficked have open to them are very limited, and their choices are extremely constrained. However, I think it is important to remember that women are active agents in their own lives even under the direst of trafficking situations. This does not mean to say that they have consented in any real sense to their servitude.

We need to be very careful to ensure that we do not allow ourselves to further victimise women by thinking in terms of their particular vulnerability to trafficking. This is centrally important to a gender perspective.

This afternoon I would also like to express appreciation of the work that has gone into the development of the federal Government’s recently unveiled $20 million package to address trafficking. The package provides a framework within which we are all expecting to work on the issues of trafficking in the future and also it focuses our attention over the course of this two day conference.

I am looking forward to hearing the Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Ellison.

I am pleased that the Minister persevered in making sure he was able to address us, because it gives us the opportunity to congratulate him on behalf of the Government for introducing this significant package. I am so pleased that this conference follows so closely on the heels of the Government announcement. This has provided us with the opportunity to discuss the specifics of the package. We have been able to focus our minds on what specifically needs to be done to properly implement the package. I think today we are all much clearer about the challenges that lie ahead. I would like to mention just a couple here now.

To my mind, a genuine interagency approach to this issue is a significant and necessary pre-requisite for the protection of the human rights of trafficked people. Such an approach recognises that it is the responsibility of government to ensure that government actions respect and protect the human rights of a victim of trafficking, and that its actions do not themselves lead to breaches of human rights.

In this regard, an approach that requires the government to be responsible for co-ordinating its own agencies in their work will lead to a seamless response to the individual woman. As the Honourable John Von Doussa discussed this morning, it is central to a human rights approach that government recognise its own obligation to ensure that the services it provides to meet the human rights needs of its citizens are delivered to those who need them.

Of course this is also an extremely pragmatic issue. The obligation is on government to make sure that its own internal arrangements – including divisions across levels of government and departments – do not interfere with that efficient and seamless delivery of services. It should not be the responsibility of the person seeking to access government services to navigate complex and numerous agencies. Their life is not divided artificially into a law enforcement component, an immigration problem and welfare needs.

Their life is a whole and government has an obligation to recognise and respond to that.

A human rights approach to trafficking breaks the trafficking cycle by refusing to further objectify the victim, by dividing her experience and her life into disparate pieces of use to government and ignoring the rest. That is what traffickers do.

This brings me back to the first point I made. It is essential that we respond to trafficking by centrally recognising the personhood of trafficked women. They are strong subjects of their own life and should be the subjects, not objects of our response.