La Strada Documentation Center

Profiling the Traffickers. Background Paper

Document number
1450
Date
2008
Title
Profiling the Traffickers. Background Paper
Author/publisher
Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, United Nations (UN)
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Meeting Documentation/Conference Reports,
Keywords
UN GIFT, United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, The Vienna Forum to fight Human Trafficking, Trafficking process, Recruitment, Transportation, Transit, Transfer,
Summary
The gap in knowledge, globally, of traffickers and their methods of operation contributesto the widespread failure to identify traffickers and those who assist them. Ofteninvestigations are reliant on victims themselves reporting incidents. Where victims escapeor are successfully removed from exploitative situations, and traffickers are identified andprosecuted, the willingness and ability of the victim to testify against his or her traffickersis often the lynchpin of securing a conviction. The pressure that this places upon atraumatized victim is acute, and combined with often inadequate legislation, will notalways result in a conviction. The fact that convictions, worldwide, have remainedrelatively low continues the cycle of trafficking by propagating the belief among traffickersand potential traffickers that the abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people can continuewith relatively little risk of detection or penalty.While there is increasing effort in the anti-trafficking community to target those who areactive at the point of exploitation, this represents but one part of a complex andmultifaceted crime. Similarly, intensive efforts to arrest and bring to justice low-levelculprits of trafficking-related crime fail to recognise that those persons who facilitated thetrafficking, may represent only a segment of a larger, transnational network of people.Available information suggests that the vast majority of traffickers who are active at themany stages of human trafficking do not come into contact with the criminal justicesystem at all.
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