What is a national border? Lines on a map? Dividing lines between cultures, systems and people? Lines of control? How are those lines drawn?

What do borders mean to you?

What does crossing borders entail?

What is an open border? And what is a closed one?

Who are stopped at the border? For whom is 'proper documentation' an impossible thing so they must take risks and cross borders 'illegally'? Who are the people who can cross borders easily 'with the right papers'?

Most borders are also intense and interesting visual spaces. Some borders witness daily traffic of thousands of people who just 'come to the other side' for their day's work and go home at the end of the day. Traffic is regulated but as a formality. Some borders are heavily guarded and patrolled and people cross it at their own peril. There are also open borders where movement is perfectly legal but some well intentioned people guard it to prevent trafficking.

What is your visual memory of a border? Do you have a border story? We are inviting you to share your visual memories and thoughts with us. If you live in a border town and witness the daily coming and going, if you have heard of or experienced a difficult/impossible border crossing may be you would like to share the images and thoughts with others. It could be a photograph or a drawing or any other kind of symbolic representation with some words.

Selected entries will be duly acknowledged/credited and included in GAATW's 2013 Calendar which will be distributed to members and allies world-wide.

Digital or scanned images need to be:

• 250 - 300 dpi
• about 8 by 6  inches in size
• JPEG or TIFF format

Do feel free to share this with your own network of friends too. Email the images to  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  on or before 1 December 2012.

GAATW-IS reports back on the UNTOC Conference of the Parties

(15 to 19 October 2012)

Background

The proposal for a review mechanism was first introduced by Argentina and Norway at the 4^th Conference of the Parties to the UNTOC in 2008.  At that time, many governments were supportive of the requirements for formal treaty oversight as per Article 32 of the UNTOC and took information about how to proceed from a wide range of treaty oversight bodies. The negotiations for a review mechanism to the UNTOC and its Protocols were led by Mexico. However as negotiations proceeded in closed working groups, positions became increasingly polarized.

COPS 6^th Session, Decision Time

When they met for five days in Vienna at the UN Conference of the Parties – after four years of negotiations – States were finally unable to agree on the terms of reference for a review mechanism for the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and its Protocols, which include the Protocol on Trafficking in Persons. The process would have reviewed States' implementation of the Convention and its Protocols and identified good practices and technical assistance needs.

GAATW has been calling for UNTOC to have an effective oversight mechanism since the adoption of the Convention in 2000. The States that are party to the UNTOC and its Protocols were deadlocked during the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties. The critical issue proved to be the funding model for the process, specifically whether a mix of regular UN budget together with voluntary contributions from States, or just the voluntary contributions alone. GAATW views the latter as unsustainable approach to what would have needed to be an ongoing process. (For UNODC’s statement see here.)

Throughout the negotiations GAATW maintained that any review mechanism needed to meet minimum requirements of transparency and inclusivity that would be necessary for it to be relevant to survivors of trafficking. Although some States stood up for meaningful realisation of these guiding principles, even under pressure to compromise to achieve consensus, throughout the process some governments have blocked any suggestion of civil society participation in a review mechanism or any release of reports from the review. 

Consequently, the proposal tabled at the UN in October did not meet GAATW's objectives of transparency and participation, in particular of survivors of trafficking, necessary for an adequate review process.  We have learned lessons from the similar process created for the UN Convention Against Corruption and are glad to see States not make the same mistakes again in the organized crime context.(For more on that process see here).

GAATW has documented how anti-trafficking initiatives do not always benefit survivors of trafficking and may harm migrant workers and workers in particular sectors, notably individuals who work in the sex sector. Furthermore GAATW has demonstrated that trafficked persons are almost universally excluded from evaluations of anti-trafficking initiatives. We need an inclusive process that would seek to learn from survivors and their advocates to ensure accountability and improve these initiatives. A bad review mechanism would not have addressed these sometimes bad laws, policies, and programmes or improved the efficacy of States’ anti-trafficking response.

GAATW delivered an intervention during the Conference of the Parties that detailed some of the times that UN human rights and criminal justice forums have recognised the need for civil society participation in the anti-trafficking response. In the majority of countries worldwide civil society not only assists governments in their implementation of the Trafficking Protocol, but also takes the lead in this regard. It is disturbing that governments would even contemplate designing a mechanism for its review that would have mostly excluded civil society. Victims of organized crimes, including human trafficking, deserve more accountability from States parties and the UN.

In the end, States agreed an amendment to the “omnibus resolution” (Ensuring effective implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols thereto) encouraging everyone to continue working toward a review mechanism. However at this point GAATW does not expect to see any further work on this until the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties in 2014.

Side Events

GAATW was represented by an eight-person delegation from GAATW-IS, Fair Work (Netherlands), LSCW (Cambodia) and FIZ (Switzerland) during the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties in Vienna.

GAATW co-organised and spoke on four panel events – on lessons we can learn from NGO participation in other UN monitoring systems; the roles of NGOs in strengthening counter-trafficking operations; on learning from victims of crimes for a better criminal justice response, and the challenges and some examples of best practice of researching human trafficking. These were designed to support our argument for civil society participation in the review mechanism.

One way we sought to promote our assertion that the review mechanism for the Trafficking Protocol needed to be centred on the experiences and needs of the victims of trafficking, was by presenting an exhibition of photographs taken by nine young tribal women during a participatory photographic project in Orissa, east India, over a period of three weeks in winter 2008/9, a collaboration between the Irish-based SúilEile project and Orissa-based NGO PRAGATI. The images and stories explore perspectives and experiences of the women around human trafficking and issues faced by women in tribal communities in this region. The photographers are all women who have experienced trafficking and labour abuse. The material produced was initially used to create awareness of trafficking in the local villages as well as to help counter the stigma experienced by victims of trafficking on returning to their own communities.

 We ask the UN to abide by its own rules in the work to end transnational organized crime, including trafficking in persons

Statement by the Vienna Alliance of NGOs and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto, sixth session

15 October 2012

Transnational organized crime is complex and requires complex strategies in response. There is no one answer. We require comprehensive, multi-sectoral, evidence-based approaches. To find effective solutions, we need to collaborate – to share both successes and challenges, technical assistance needs and good practices. We need to talk and listen to, and learn from, each other. This review must be inclusive and transparent if efforts are to be credible, authoritative and effective. It must look like this:

Draw on existing expertise, from a wide range of sources:

Non-governmental experts

There is still much that we do not know, and we need an evidence-based approach to understand the impact of the implementation of UNTOC and its Protocols on the people they are intended to benefit. Moreover, research has shown that some of these efforts have impacts, not always positive, on many others who are not part of these target communities. NGOs working on these issues must be able to contribute their research and experience to the review mechanism.

Victim-centred mechanism

Survivors of the crimes covered by UNTOC and its Protocols, their service providers and advocates have direct experience of the implementation and impact of these treaties. They are essential contributors to the review mechanism.

The mechanism for this inclusive approach already exists in the Conference of the Parties Rules of Procedure. Rule 17 on the participation of non-governmental organizations, read in conjunction with Rule 2 that clarifies that the rules apply to any session of the Conference and to any mechanism that the Conference may establish. We urge the Conference of the Parties to ensure that the review mechanism adopted at this session honours this rule and good practice.

The Vienna Alliance of NGOs and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, urge states to ensure that the final terms of reference for the review mechanism to UNTOC and its Protocols live up to its guiding principles of being “transparent, efficient, non-intrusive, inclusive and impartial”. This is vital to ensure the credibility and authority not just of the review mechanism, but of the UNTOC and its Protocols.

We look forward in working with States to make that a reality.

• First Intervention: Agenda item 1(f): General discussion
• Second Intervention: Agenda item 2(b): Review of the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols thereto: Trafficking in Persons Protocol

WHAT: GAATW, RESPECT and Babaylan Denmark will organise a workshop under the sub-thematic theme: Crisis, Consequences + Resistance, Organization, and Action Strategies. GAATW-IS in collaboration with 3 member organisations (LSCW, BOMSA and WOREC) will present the experiences and analyses of returnee migrant women from Cambodia, Nepal and Bangladesh. By the end of the workshop we aim to have better understanding of what safe migration is from a feminist perspective and from women's realities.

WHEN: 26 November 2012

WHERE: Miriam College, Quezon City, Philippines