Human Trafficking, Border Security and Related Corruption
- Document number
- 3046
- Date
- 2013
- Title
- Human Trafficking, Border Security and Related Corruption
- Author/publisher
- Centre for the Study of Democracy
- Availability
- View/save PDF version of this document
- Document type(s)
- Guidelines/Recommendations, National Law, Training Material/Resources,
- Keywords
- human trafficking, corruption, border security, migration, human rights, organised crime
- Summary
- The paper Human Trafficking, Border Security and Related Corruption in the EU, by Atanas Rusev of the Center for Study of Democracy in Bulgaria, investigates the much under-researched aspect of corruption and human trafficking. Rusev explores this topic vis-à-vis border authorities and connected corruption to facilitate, inter alia, trafficking in persons and how this corruption can be related to the corporate sector and enter into the highest political spheres. Trafficking in human beings, as a transnational crime, involves the movement of people across borders. In this regard, border control authorities are expected to play an important role in preventing and curbing this phenomenon. Border guards are identified as key actors in the fight against trafficking in human beings both in the new Directive 2011/36/EU and the associated EU Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings. The role of border guards in combatting trafficking is largely seen as in the role of ‘first responder’ as part of the National Referral Mechanisms in identification of victims of trafficking, as well as for the identification and apprehension of traffickers within border control procedures.