Prevention of the crime of trafficking is one of the core purposes of the Trafficking Protocol. One of the best ways to prevent trafficking in persons is to comprehensively address the whole issue, rather than addressing aspects of the problem separately.

A comprehensive approach to address human trafficking

In the United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, Member States have declared that an effective response to human trafficking should address the four following objectives: prevention of trafficking; protection and assistance to victims of trafficking; prosecution of the perpetrators of trafficking; and strengthening partnership to achieve these ends. This is also called the 4Ps Framework.

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The 4 P's approach to trafficking in persons
Policy Approaches
Developing comprehensive strategies to address human trafficking

  • Address all the 4Ps to ensure the anti-human-trafficking programme is effective. 

  • Undertake strategic planning to explore opportunities for national collaboration and to define national priorities on combating trafficking in persons, in pursuit of Sustainable Developmental Goals targets 5.2, 8.7, and 16.2. 

  • Ratify and implement relevant law, including human rights and labour standards, in compliance with international law and standards. Raise awareness among legal practitioners of the legal frameworks that can be brought to bear in approaching trafficking in persons. 

  • Create coordination mechanisms or bodies to implement the comprehensive national strategy. 

Good Practice
Uganda’s National Action Plan for Prevention of Trafficking in Persons

In July 2020, the Government of Uganda launched its second National Action Plan for Prevention of Trafficking in Persons, and the National Referral Guidelines for Management of Victims of Trafficking. This plan builds upon lessons learnt from the first National Action Plan on Prevention of Trafficking in Persons which identified five strategic objectives. These objectives were: enhancing national policies and legal frameworks; increasing successful prosecutions; reducing vulnerability to human trafficking; improving victim protection and assistance mechanisms; and developing well-coordinated systems and structures to manage the crime.  

The plan aims to establish structures and systems to prevent the crime in a sustainable way. To achieve this, it will develop curricula and training courses to systematically identify, protect, and support victims; to improve effective investigations and prosecution, and to strengthen cooperation between the different actors at both the national and transnational levels. 

Understand and address the supply side of trafficking

Traffickers often select their victims from among vulnerable people. In the context of migration, people who are vulnerable at home may be more likely to look for opportunities elsewhere, and they may be more susceptible to false or fraudulent promises.

Example
Vulnerability to trafficking as a result of social and cultural practices

In some parts of the world, migration (even when it is undertaken by risky, irregular methods, relying on traffickers or smugglers) is a long-established cultural rite of passage, particularly for young men and adolescent boys. Women and girls are often marginalized and do not have access to the same opportunities men and boys do, including access to full and reliable information about legal channels of migration and terms and conditions of work. These factors can entrench their vulnerability to dishonest recruitment agents and traffickers. They are then susceptible to gendered forms of violence, discrimination and exploitation including physical, emotional and sexual violence and exploitation, domestic work, and child marriage or forced marriage. In some countries it is common practice for children to be entrusted to more affluent relatives living elsewhere, ostensibly with a view to improving the situation of the children and their families, but it is a situation that can result in exploitation. Read further in Gender and Migration.

A framework for understanding vulnerability is very helpful to policymakers in order to ensure that they develop policies to combat trafficking that respond to actual vulnerabilities. One such framework is the IOM Determinants of Migrant Vulnerability (DoMV) framework developed to identify, protect and assist migrants who have experienced or are vulnerable to violence, exploitation and abuse. Learn more in its dedicated chapter.  

The interlinkage Trafficking in persons and mobility dimensions of crises provides an example of the use of the DoMV model in the context of displacement.  

Policy Approaches
Addressing the supply side of trafficking

  • To prevent trafficking in persons, address root causes and the factors that render people vulnerable to being trafficked. 

  • Traffickers often select their victims from among vulnerable people. Therefore, establish and support mechanisms to identify, protect and assist persons vulnerable to exploitation. Such mechanisms should pay specific attention to gendered forms of exploitation such as child marriage or forced marriage.  

  • Ensure that potential migrants vulnerable to exploitation, especially women and girls, are properly informed about the risks of migration (such as exploitation, debt bondage and health and security issues). 

  • Adopt measures to reduce vulnerability by ensuring that appropriate legal documentation for birth, citizenship and marriage is provided and made available to all persons. 

  • Design counter-trafficking measures that do not negatively interfere with safe, orderly and regular migration. Policies introduced to prevent trafficking by curtailing movement may instead make people more vulnerable to exploitation.  

  • Create safe and legal pathways to migrate to help decrease the vulnerability of migrants to being trafficked.  

  • Provide full and reliable information to migrants about legal channels of migration and the terms of condition of work. This helps migrants migrate safely and minimizes their risk of being trafficked. This could be done in the format of information campaigns (see principles of effective communication).

To Go Further
Understand and address the demand side of trafficking

Trafficking in persons is driven by the demand for cheap goods and services, including sexual services. Trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, for instance, is driven by the demand for people, mostly women and girls, in the sex industry, including for prostitution, pornography, or other forms of sexual entertainment. But trafficking of people in industries outside of the sex industry is also common, and also driven by demand.  

As a country develops and new markets emerge, people are attracted from elsewhere in search of new opportunities. Where migration is not effectively managed, the result can be that migrants are placed in situations of exploitation, including through trafficking. This has been seen where, for instance, demand for cheap and compliant labour in agriculture, and for construction of public and private infrastructure, is met by unscrupulous recruitment. Such exploitation may be the result of unregulated recruitment agencies, but it can also result from regulated processes, involving States of origin “exporting” their citizens as migrant labour into exploitative conditions elsewhere, and policies in destination countries that allow exploitative conditions for migrant workers.  

In recent years, products like palm oil, chocolate, textiles and other goods have been the subject of scrutiny because of the exploited labour involved in production. Awareness-raising campaigns about these products inform consumers about the role they can play in combating exploitation through the decisions they make about what they purchase.  

Finally, as discussed below at 2.4, crises such as humanitarian disaster and conflict can increase demand. Armed groups and armed forces use children in combat and for portering, cooking and other duties. People who have been internally displaced or are on the move from a crisis-affected area may be at higher risk of being recruited.

Policy Approaches
Addressing the demand side of trafficking
  • Enact legislation to hold companies to account, including to encourage them to eradicate human trafficking and associated forms of abuse and exploitation from their operations as well as their supply chains, e.g. by disclosing their anti-trafficking policies and efforts  
  • Take steps to eliminate trafficking in public procurement processes
  • Regulate recruitment agencies to ensure that migrant workers are not at risk of using unscrupulous recruitment agencies
  • In countries of origin for migrant workers, put in place policies to ensure that citizens enter markets in countries that protect the rights of migrant workers 
  • In countries of destination for migrant workers, put in place policies to protect the rights of migrant workers
  • Build relationships with private sector actors to ensure that their role in labour migration is positive and call private sector partners to account where their actions do not accord with labour regulations or increase vulnerability of migrants to forced labour or trafficking for the purpose of forced labour.
  • Take measures to improve the regulations on informal sectors, such as domestic work.
  • Promote ethical recruitment, by taking action against unscrupulous agents and brokers who offer services to provide or employ labour, but offer jobs that do not exist, misrepresent conditions of work, falsify contracts or confiscate documents, or charge recruitment fees
  • Educate consumers about the role they can play in combating exploitation through their purchasing decisions
Good Practice
Eliminating trafficking from supply chains

In line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, some governments have committed themselves to take steps to eliminate trafficking in their own procurement process. Increasingly, to achieve their obligations under international law, States have also enacted legislation requiring that companies take steps to eradicate human trafficking and associated forms of abuse and exploitation from their operations as well as their supply chains. Examples include the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (2010), the United Kingdom Modern Slavery Act (2015), and Australia’s Modern Slavery Act (2018). As a result, an increasing number of businesses are taking action to prevent and mitigate the risks of human trafficking in their operations and supply chains, usually in partnership with business peers, civil society, and other organizations.

Source

OHCHR, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, 2011

To Go Further
Key messages

  • Effective anti-human-trafficking programmes should address all the 4Ps: prevention of trafficking; protection and assistance to its victims; prosecution of its perpetrators; and strengthening partnership to these ends. 

  • Developing comprehensive national or local strategies in line with the 4Ps framework is effective in preventing trafficking in persons. 

  • Factors at the individual, household, community and structural levels can contribute to the vulnerability of people to violence, exploitation, abuse and trafficking.  

  • Trafficking in persons is fuelled by demand for cheap goods and services, which results in exploited labour. This occurs in both government and private sector supply chains. 

  • Factors that make individuals vulnerable to trafficking (and to violence, exploitation and abuse more generally) can best be addressed by designing comprehensive approaches, rather than trying to address each factor separately.  

  • Migration-related policies in origin, transit and destination countries can exacerbate or reduce vulnerability to human trafficking. 

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