GAATW at the United Nations transnational organised crime conference
The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) will be running a side event at the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations (UN) Convention against Transnational Organized Crime this week in Vienna, Austria.
The COP is due to “discuss draft resolutions on human trafficking, smuggling of migrants and firearms smuggling among others matters”. GAATW’s side event will focus on the UN Trafficking Protocol as 2015 marks the 15th anniversary of the international law against human trafficking.
At the side event, we will look back at some of the success and challenges while using the UN Trafficking Protocol (in full: UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children) as the basis of efforts to eradicate trafficking in persons. We will critically assess how policies relate to the human rights approach to trafficking in human beings and the impact of measures on the rights of trafficked persons. We will identify some of the issues that need to be addressed in the next few years.
Topics discussed will range from access to justice, in particular compensation for trafficked persons, the demand side of trafficking, participatory research with people who have been trafficked, and research on funding for anti-trafficking work and how anti-trafficking money is spent.
Panel:
- Ambassador Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger, National Coordinator on Combating Human Trafficking, Director General for Legal and Consular Affairs at the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, Austria
- Anne Gallagher, Former UN Adviser on Trafficking; International legal scholar and practitioner, Australia
- Kate Sheill, International Advocacy Officer, GAATW International Secretariat, Thailand
- Evelyn Probst, Head, LEFÖ-IBF Austria
- Marieke van Doorninck, Advisor Public Affairs, La Strada International, the Netherlands
- Paula Riedemann, Project Coordinator, Ban Ying Coordination and Counselling Center, Germany
The side event will take place on 9 October. For more information about the COP, see the UN Office on Drugs and Crime website
Next year, GAATW’s journal the Anti-Trafficking Review will publish a series of articles themed on ’15 years of the UN Trafficking Protocol’. Visit www.antitraffickingreview.org for more information.