A significant new protocol on forced labour was agreed last year, which promised to strengthen national laws and actions on protection of workers’ rights. However, many regressive policies related to migration and labour persist, according to the latest issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review, published by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW).
The new issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review examines how the global community is addressing forced labour and trafficking. The journal questions whether recent efforts have done enough to stop exploitation at work.
Up to 20 journalists will receive support to participate in a four-day workshop in Bangkok on 3-6 October 2015. The proposed workshop is a part of GAATW’s efforts to bring back the focus on women migrants from victims and sensationalised objects to agents of change, and subjects of hope, determination, and self-reliance. Following the workshop in October, 8 participants will be selected by November 2015, for fellowships to publish five stories each on labour migration and human trafficking. Each awardee will be expected to produce and publish (at least) 2 x 800-word articles, and 3 x 1,200- word articles.
The workshop is open to mid-level to senior journalists from the print media in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, reporting in English or the regional languages. The cost of travel and accommodation to attend the workshop will be supported by GAATW.
The Anti-Trafficking Review calls for papers for a themed issue entitled 'Trafficking Representations.' Work that migrants do in the sex industry and other irregular employment sectors is increasingly characterised as exploitation and trafficking. Representations of trafficking and forced labour are pervasive within media, policymaking, and humanitarian debates, discourses and interventions. Of late, the notion of 'modern slavery' is on show in campaigns aiming to raise funds and awareness about anti-trafficking among corporate and local enterprises and the general public. Celebrity interventions, militant documentaries, artistic works and fiction films have all become powerful vectors of distribution of the trafficking and 'modern slavery' rhetoric. These offer simplistic solutions to complex issues without challenging the structural and causal factors of inequality. They also tend to entrench racialised narratives; present a narrow depiction of an 'authentic victim;' and confuse sex work with trafficking. Such representations play a key role in legitimising oftentimes problematic rescue operations that can involve criminalisation, detention and arrest of both non-trafficked and trafficked persons as well a justifying restrictive labour and migration laws that exacerbate migrants' precarious living and work situations.
GAATW-IS would like to express our deepest condolences to all those affected by the earthquake in Nepal this weekend. The loss of life, personal and public property including monuments of national heritage is unimaginable. Our thoughts and prayers are with our members, partners and friends in Nepal, WOREC, Shakti Samuha and all other members of the Alliance Against Trafficking in Women and Children in Nepal (AATWIN), Pourakhi, ABC-Nepal and People's Forum.
We are saddened at the loss of one of our colleagues, Bhawani Shiwokoti from Pourakhi. We had visited her in Dolakha recently and again met up in Godavari as part of our project work, and it is impossible to believe that someone as full of life as her is no longer with us. Our thoughts are with Bhawani's family.
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