Beyond Palermo

While the United Nations has set the World Day Against Trafficking in July of every year, the Philippines also holds a similar event every Dec. 12, to commemorate the passage of the Palermo Protocols. Twenty years ago, the United Nations adopted the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in Palermo, Italy. Three supplementary protocols were created to support this convention, taking their name as a whole from the place where the convention was adopted: The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children; The Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air; and (adopted in 2001) the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, their Parts and Components and Ammunition.

It is the first protocol (on trafficking women and children) that we remember on Dec. 12 for our International Day Against Trafficking – but to understand that protocol fully, it is important to see the context within which it was created.

The creation of the protocols was a milestone in the criminalization of human trafficking and the adoption of standards for its prosecution, as well as for the international cooperation necessary to fight it. The protocols laid out a definition of trafficking in persons that has become a template around the world and a necessary legal bulwark against the return of widespread slavery.

While slavery in its purest and most notorious form has been abolished in modern times, it would be unwise to believe that this progress could not be reversed. Slavery was a constant in human society for much longer than it has been a taboo, and its legal abolition in most of the world has not magically undone the structures and entrenched ideologies that allowed slavery to take root. One need only look at the persistent and explosive racial tensions in the United States today to see that the racism that fueled slavery in that country is still very much alive.

This is one of the reasons why, to truly eliminate human trafficking as the modern descendant of slavery, it is important to go beyond the limits of the Palermo Protocols. One of the first things that can be noted from the origin of the protocols is the fact that their creation was intimately tied to transnational organized crime, as well as illegal migration. While there are provisions that attempt to raise the needs and rights of the victims, for the most part the protocols are concerned with prosecuting and penalizing as opposed to anything else. While a cornerstone of the fight against human trafficking to date, the protocols are not a human rights document – and in that sense, there is much room for improvement.

In an online column, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro (former UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children) wrote about what she views as the shortcomings in the implementation of the protocols in the 20 years following their creation.

Summarized briefly, these are: (a) the restrictive interpretation of human trafficking and slavery; (b) the need to move prevention measures beyond mere awareness campaigns; (c) not enough done to dismantle patriarchal structures that make women vulnerable; (d) the lack of emphasis on the labor exploitation aspect of trafficking; (e) the failure to identify trafficked persons; (f) a lack of a rights-centric approach in government anti-trafficking actions; and (g) the fact that remedies are rarely awarded to victims of trafficking.

Many of these criticisms stem from the same root cause: the fact that the approach of the protocols to trafficking is entangled primarily, not with human rights, but with criminal justice concerns. Like Giammarinaro, I believe that a victim-centric approach – one where increasing emphasis is placed on prevention, protection and remedies for victims and the vulnerable – is what is now necessary in order to uproot trafficking. More importantly, this is what is needed in order to directly address the conditions which make human trafficking in all its forms possible, just as they did slavery before it.

Thanks in part to the protocols, we now live in a better world, one where human trafficking is defined and criminalized. Yet, as with slavery before it, making the act illegal does not eliminate the structural causes that make trafficking lucrative and its victims vulnerable: unequal distribution of wealth (whether between nation or people), discrimination against minorities and women, prioritizing profit in supply chains or employment status rather than ensuring sustainability and a living wage.

Human trafficking takes many forms. It is the sexual degradation of women and children that we often see make the headlines, but it is also more than that. It is the plight of the migrant worker forced to work in inhumane conditions for less than minimum wage. It is the parent forced to sell an organ to pay for an operation for her child. It is the victim that self-harms because they did not receive the help they needed to recover from their trauma.

What is common in all of these is the exploitation of human beings for the profit of others. I spoke about the nature of human rights before, and how it is the refusal or inability to recognize the humanity of others that makes it easy to deprive them of their rights. Many of the advocacies I pursue – whether it be the passage of the SOGIE Equality Act, the need for an alternative to adversarial systems in the prosecution of trafficking cases, the urgency of eliminating victim-blaming culture, or the importance of providing human rights and victim-centric training to law enforcement officials – have a common end goal in spite of their diversity. That end is to create an environment that does not encourage exploitation, one where the vulnerable receive assistance and where victims receive care.

The Palermo Protocols are landmark legal agreements, and they have changed the world for the better in many ways. But to continue to progress we must go beyond their text and towards programs that target structures more than criminals, which focus not just on the culpable but on the vulnerable.

The ideal world that we aim for is not one where traffickers are punished, but where trafficking does not occur at all.