Since 1994, GAATW has sought to critically analyse and challenge problematic areas in discourse and activism around trafficking in women.
Emerging from the feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s, GAATW worked with the movements of the Global South and Global North to push for an internationally agreed definition of human trafficking and a human rights approach to addressing the problem. It is largely due to these efforts that the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons contains a definition which recognises that trafficking occurs in many sectors, not just in the sex work sector, and emphasises that exploitation derives from the conditions of work.
Since then, GAATW has continued to build alliances with different feminist and labour rights movements, to push for a feminist, rights-based approach to human trafficking and forced labour. These efforts include feminist participatory research and knowledge-building, advocacy with intergovernmental bodies, and strategic communications and publications, including the first open access, peer reviewed journal dedicated to the issue of human trafficking.
Today, our Human Trafficking and Forced Labour programme focuses on four key areas:
- Lived experience expertise
- Reducing reliance on criminalisation
- Sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms
- Labour exploitation
Lived Experience Expertise
GAATW seeks to respect and amplify the expertise of women with lived experience of trafficking and forced labour. We are proud that our membership includes organisations that were founded and are led by women with lived experience, and that much of our research has placed lived experience expertise at its heart.
The Human Trafficking and Forced Labour programme continues to place an emphasis on feminist participatory action research, and to use these learnings to critique harmful practices within the anti-trafficking sector.
Reducing Reliance on Criminalisation
GAATW challenges the assumptions that the way to tackle human trafficking is through increased policing and criminalisation, or through tighter border controls and restrictions on migration. We facilitate inter-movement dialogues to critically reflect on criminal justice approaches to human trafficking, and to advocate for the human rights of all women on the move.
Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Freedoms
Throughout our history, GAATW has challenged approaches to anti-trafficking that deny women sexual and reproductive freedoms. A significant part of this work has been to stand alongside the sex workers rights movement in their fight for recognition and respect.
We continue this work today and advocate for an approach to addressing human trafficking and other rights violations in the sex work sector that is based on meaningful engagement with those in the sector themselves and that responds to the needs of sex workers as they articulate them.
Labour Rights
GAATW believes that the challenges that trafficked and migrant women face cannot be seen in isolation of the larger global, economic, and political realities that restrict women workers’ rights.
In tandem with our Women Workers for Change programme, our Human Trafficking and Forced Labour programme advocates for respect for labour rights of all women workers as being fundamental to the prevention of trafficking and forced labour.
As part of this work, we seek to build solidarity across different movements and to analyse the utilisation of different legal and non-legal frameworks for accessing justice for women who have experienced labour exploitation.