2012 Trafficking In Persons Final Report.pdf - NCJTC Home

Annotated Bibliography
Trafficking & Smuggling
Bhabha, Jacqueline, ―Trafficking, Smuggling, and Human Rights,‖ Migration Information
Source, March 2005.
This article by lawyer and migration expert Jacqueline Bhabha outlines the innovative
approach to human movement established in the Palermo Protocols on Smuggling and
Trafficking. She examines the language of each Protocol, citing the nuances that create
the possibility of greater protections for trafficked persons and the important distinction
made between smuggling and trafficking. She also underlines how difficult it can be to
identify any situation as solely smuggling or trafficking, as many cases of smuggling with
consent become coercive trafficking cases. The slippery continuum created makes it
crucial for law enforcement and those who encounter potential victims to treat them with
respect and dignity and not as criminals. She also notes the issue of coercion as being
open to interpretation, since some situations (such as extreme destitution), may drive
people to take actions just as much as direct coercion by another person may do so.
Zhang, Sheldon. Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking
Migration expert Sheldon Zhang examines the complex interplay between human
movement and criminal activity in an increasingly globalized world. Understanding the
manifold factors that drive individuals and groups to migrate to countries with better
opportunities, Zhang assesses the ways in which criminals have taken advantage of the
rise in movement. By increasing immigration control in the interest of national security,
many countries have, in effect, pushed immigrants directly into the hands of smugglers.
Chapter seven zeroes in on the fraught and slippery relationship between trafficking and
smuggling. Guest worker programs, addressing economic and employment issues in
sending countries, and improving international collaboration are among the macro-level
solutions possible.
Statistics & Data
Laczko, Frank and Marco A. Gramegna, Developing Better Indicators of Human Trafficking, 10
Brown J. World Aff. 179, 183 (2003).
In this article, Lazcko and Gramegna lament the deficiency of thorough, quantitative
research on human trafficking statistics despite the growing volume of trafficking-related
literature and the rising international awareness of human trafficking as a criminal and
human rights issue. The authors indicate reasons that make measuring difficult, including
differences over definitions, lack of reliable trend reporting by nations over time, lack of
consistence data collection among nations, and low levels of reporting crimes as
trafficking. The authors conclude that improved efforts to identify cases of and combat
trafficking, along with better international data collection, will help to make numbers
more reliable. They suggest raising awareness about the paucity of data, assisting poor
countries with data compilation, promoting existing data more widely, urging agencies to
coordinate their data collection efforts, and venturing comparative projects to track longterm
changes and to establish standards across countries.
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