Bandana Pattanaik

Over the last five months, many reports and statements have alerted us about a possible rise in human trafficking during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As we discussed this in some detail in a webinar hosted by the ILO last week and had released a statement on the topic earlier this year, I thought of doing a companion piece to my last week’s blog. My intention in going back to the same theme is to start an honest discussion with like-minded colleagues so that together we can take steps to turn this challenging time into a transformative one.

Some of the reports that talk about the possibility of a rise in trafficking cases during and after COVID-19 are very nuanced and cautious. They often start with disclaimers that it will not be possible at this stage to assess the impact of the pandemic on human trafficking. The authors go on to share data on the disruptions in assistance measures to trafficked persons during lockdown periods, inadequate healthcare for victims and caregivers in shelters, challenges of online counselling and delay in court proceedings and repatriation plans. These reports also detail the multiple vulnerabilities faced by migrant workers and those in the informal economy and argue that the impending global economic downturn will lessen people’s capacity to resist exploitation, including human trafficking.

Many statements, on the other hand, do not see any need to explain their claims, they just state that the pandemic will definitely result in a large number of people being trafficked. Some authors refer to specific groups of people such as children and migrant workers or people on a certain route such as the North Africa and Europe migration corridor. A few reports mention both trafficking and smuggling while others talk about trafficking and modern slavery. There are statements that elaborate on the similarity between COVID-19 and human trafficking. Some even go a step further and declare that human trafficking is the pandemic.

Projections and predictions regarding possible rise in human trafficking have been made at different points of time. In 2004, some anti-trafficking practitioners predicted that there would be a rise in trafficking during the Olympic Games in Athens. In 2006, similar claims reached a feverish pitch around the FIFA World Cup in Germany and people even came up with precise numbers of women who would be trafficked. Although those claims were later refuted by research, including by GAATW, the trend continues. Some anti-trafficking organisations now use sporting events to raise awareness of human trafficking while others highlight the labour exploitation in factories that produce sports goods and the situation of overworked and underpaid contractual workers at large sporting events. The Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 started a trend to link natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and cyclones with a rise in human trafficking. Projections of a rise in trafficking cases were also made during and after the 2008 economic recession.

The underlying logic in linking vulnerabilities exacerbated by natural disasters, economic downturns or a pandemic with a possible rise in trafficking is simple and quite plausible. What is difficult to understand is why loss of lives, livelihood and employment resulting in hunger and deprivation for a large number of people are not newsworthy but ‘a possible rise in trafficking’ always grabs the headlines. What is also worrying is the anti-trafficking community’s desire to always stay on top of the list of terrible things. We invoke the bogey of trafficking at every opportunity and I am willing to believe that this may stem from our commitment to end human trafficking. However, we do not demand that anti-trafficking actions must go beyond the long established framework of 3Ps. As I said in my previous blog, we simply do not want to look at the inadequacy of our current anti-trafficking strategies to meet a problem of such a magnitude.

There are estimates, which claim that more than 40 million people in the world are in situations of trafficking, forced labour and modern slavery. According to the US TIP report, only 118,932 victims of trafficking were identified last year and 11,841 traffickers prosecuted out of whom only 9,548 were convicted. It is unclear whether states took adequate steps to address the socio-economic and political vulnerabilities of the identified victims of trafficking so that they would not fall into the same situation again. Anti-trafficking assistance programmes in many countries are still almost exclusively funded by foreign donors. Moreover, we all know that creation of decent work opportunities, not well-funded temporary assistance services, can address the vulnerabilities faced by millions of people around the world. What then shall we do with the predictions of a further rise in human trafficking in the wake of COVID-19?

It was encouraging to read astute analyses of the current situation in some of the reports on COVID-19 and human trafficking. Several reports pointed out that border control as an anti-trafficking strategy has created further risks for migrant workers and not stopped trafficking. Many authors mentioned bad working conditions, lack of social protection, entrenched economic, social and structural inequalities and discrimination based on race, religion and gender as drivers of human trafficking. However, it was frustrating to see these reports then make a jump to issue warnings about the ‘fork tongued traffickers looking to reap new victims’, ‘predators who will make false promises’ and ‘terrorist and organised crime groups’ waiting to take advantage of the pandemic.

Colleagues made links between unaffordable healthcare services, rise in domestic violence and burden of unpaid care work and increased risk of trafficking. But their recommendations were for states to implement awareness raising and strengthen victim assistance programmes, to not divert funds from anti-trafficking work to healthcare, to step up law enforcement measures, to set up proper protocols and guidelines and make sure that vulnerable people do not fall prey to traffickers. For example, the disruptions in anti-slavery operations such as the Brazil government’s special mobile enforcement group merited a mention, but Bolsanaro’s recent labour reforms that weaken the collective bargaining rights of trade unions did not.

Unfortunately, Brazil is not the only country that has taken regressive steps to weaken labour rights. Hungary has suspended all employee protections in its labour codes. France has increased working hours until the end of this year. Social dialogue has been undermined in Poland. Some states in India have issued notifications for a 72-hour working week and the central government has concluded its so called labour reforms to allow more flexibility to employers, create opportunities for foreign investors and do away with labour inspection. These are just a few examples. I am sure similar regressive steps have been taken elsewhere. Trade unions and workers’ rights groups have raised their voices against these decisions. Why are we, the anti-trafficking community, not making a link between erosion of labour rights and rise in trafficking?

Ironically, the Ministry of Home Affairs of India has pledged to release Rs 100 Crore (one billion) for anti-trafficking work and advised all states and Union territories to expedite the setting up of new Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) and upgrade the infrastructure of existing ones to ‘combat and prevent’ human trafficking. The government’s advisory states that police departments should work out ‘intelligence’ and ‘surveillance’ mechanisms to identify gangs, gather information about their history, affiliations and activities, and modus operandi to deceive people. At a time when police atrocities on certain groups of people are widely reported within India and elsewhere, allocating funds to give more power to law enforcement is insensitive, to put it mildly.

How can we move on from speculation (and so back to business as usual) to transformative action steps? What could we, the anti-trafficking community, do in the short and long term that would contribute to systemic change? In other words, what is our political work and how do we plan to do it?

In our statement earlier this year, we had listed a number of changes that we would like to see. Many of our members, partners and allies would also like to see those changes. However, where do we begin? How can we start the process of change from within our work areas?

I suggest below a few things we, CSOs in the anti-trafficking community, could start with:

• Rather than speculating about the rise of trafficking in general, we might need to be more specific about the vulnerabilities experienced by various groups of people and try to find concrete solutions. For example, if our work is to assist trafficked persons, we need to make sure that support services continue with some adaptations, for example, by diverting funds to emergency food, shelter and healthcare. If we are specific about the problems, there is better chance of finding solutions.
• Those of us working on policy advocacy could also keep an eye on policies that have increased vulnerabilities of people and those that have empowered them. It would be important for us to start looking at policies that are not on trafficking. The obvious ones would be on labour and migration. But we could also analyse the impact of policies related to health, agriculture and education on increasing or reducing vulnerabilities of people.
• The impact of COVID-19 on the world of work has been devastating and women workers have been hit hard because many work in the informal sector and carry the burden of unpaid care work. Each sector is coping with slightly different kinds of challenges. It is important to come up with sector and location specific solutions including strategies to collectivise or unionise to effect change. Anti-trafficking action with regard to various sectors of work have remained limited to identifying elements of trafficking in a few sectors and then taking steps to ensure victim assistance and, in some cases, access to justice. While these measures are urgent, it is imperative to collaborate with workers’ rights groups to strengthen political education and organising among workers. Without strengthening rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, we cannot address the vulnerabilities of workers to exploitation, including trafficking.
• One of the participants in the ILO webinar wanted to know if the pandemic would make people more vulnerable to debt bondage and push them into precarious work. It might. However, it is important to analyse this further and find out why some people fall into traps of debt bondage. We will then know that many of these loans are taken to pay for medical emergencies. Privatisation of healthcare has aggravated vulnerabilities of many working class people and taking loans by pledging their labour is one of their coping strategies. This is how trafficking and bonded labour are linked to lack of public healthcare for all. By delving deeper into the debt bondage stories, we will also find out that people who take these loans are often landless or have small pieces of land but cannot finance fertiliser and pesticide dependent agriculture. Anti-trafficking action would typically go after the loan shark, the agent who traps people and then pushes them into bonded labour. If we start seeing links between high costs of privatised healthcare and landlessness and debt bondage, our advocacy actions would change.
• Finally, proposing measures such as accessible and affordable public services, social protection floors for all, viability of subsistence agriculture as a livelihood option, recognition, valuation and redistribution of unpaid care work and a culture of non-violence as prevention strategies to address exploitation and trafficking is the first step. The next step would be to plan and implement our long-term advocacy strategies along with other social justice movements, which can take a long time, given the current political climate.

I am not being prescriptive, just thinking aloud and wondering how we can start linking our vision of a just and fair world with our anti-trafficking work. The tasks ahead for state and non-state actors are daunting. The migrant workers, who had returned home or were planning to do so, are now going back to work. Have the working conditions changed for the better or worse? Some of them will not be able to go back because their jobs do not exist anymore. Will the states stand by the sides of people and protect their rights? Would we raise our voices if they do not do so? If we do not, the dire predictions will come true, trafficking will rise and the current anti-trafficking responses will fail those whom they purport to protect. Yet again.