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Responding to Human Trafficking: Complexities and Challenges

This article discusses the complexities and challenges of responding to human trafficking, highlighting the need for comprehensive, collaborative, and trauma-informed approaches. It also emphasizes the importance of centering survivor voices and addressing root causes and vulnerabilities.

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Responding to Human Trafficking: Complexities and Challenges

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  1. Responding to Human Trafficking: Complexities and Challenges Dr. Rosemary Nagy Nipissing University

  2. Who Are We? & What We Do! Check out our website at: https://noraht.nipissingu.ca/ Follow us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/CanadaNORAHT/

  3. Our objectives: • To identify gaps and barriers in service; • To develop best practices for the north; • To forge relationships for regional coordination; • To make social policy recommendations; • To mobilize and share knowledge.

  4. 8 PAR workshops – 2017 North Bay Sudbury Little Current Sault Ste Marie Cochrane Kirkland Lake Dokis First Nation Parry Sound 161 participants. 60 Indigenous. 5 with lived experience.

  5. Next Steps • Service Mapping • Local process • We can assist • Education • For service providers • Toolkits • Indicators • Numbers??

  6. What is Human Trafficking? Photo by Gina Snooks

  7. Human Trafficking = Source: Coalition for Assisting Trafficking Individuals (CATI), London / United Nations, Palermo Protocol

  8. Source UNDOC 2016 Report on Trafficking in Persons

  9. Sexual exploitation? All prostitution is inherently exploitative. Sex work is chosen and is not the same as trafficking

  10. Canadian Law • Criminal Code: 279.01 (1) Every person who recruits, transports, transfers, receives, holds, conceals or harbours a person, or exercises control, direction or influence over the movements of a person, for the purpose of exploiting them or facilitating their exploitation is guilty of an indictable offence…

  11. Control of Movement is key

  12. Looming over anti-trafficking Bedford v. Canada (SCC 2013)

  13. “All sex acts performed for an exchange of money…even when the person is of the age of consent, is a form of sexual exploitation and may be deemed sex trafficked” (2014 report)

  14. Sex work is a job selling some form of sexual service. It is a “pragmatic sensible response to a limited range of options.” Trafficking is coerced or forced labour.

  15. Participant comments • “Intimate partner trafficking them: this is all they know. Usually unaware that trafficking is illegal.” • “People are brainwashed into sex trafficking” • “Women at risk are those who cannot afford rent, often exchanging sexual favors for rent.” • “Not people nabbing girls, but young girls prostituting themselves for drugs and being used”

  16. Participant comments • Human trafficking “might look like domestic violence, sexual assault, drug charges” • “No clear understanding of the difference between choosing to be sex worker and being sucked into human trafficking” • Spectrum of sex worker to trafficking, and women are fluid along the spectrum

  17. Collaboration? • Comprehensive • Harm reduction • Non-judgmental • Culturally sensitive • Trauma-informed • Flexible, 24/7 support • Long-term commitment

  18. How should we respond to human trafficking without becoming part of the anti-Trafficking problem?

  19. The Anti-Trafficking Problem • “Collateral Damage” (GAATW 2007) • CBSA Deportations (see Butterfly 2015) • Operation Northern Spotlight: “repeatedly experienced” by sex workers as intimidation, harassment, and violation of privacy (Kempadoo and McFadyen 2017, 13).

  20. The Anti-Trafficking Problem • “Protecting Innocents”: good victims and bad prostitutes • Emphasis on law enforcement over structural violence, labour rights, development, etc.

  21. Challenging the Rescue Narrative

  22. Empowerment, Agency & Self-Determination “We need to suspend the ongoing creation of Western stories of damage and harm. Otherwise the statistics become toxic narratives that are not situated within lives of resistance and strength, nor placed in historical and changing place and time” Natalie Clark “Red Intersectionality and Violence-informed Witnessing Praxis with Indigenous Girls” (2016)

  23. Centering Voices of Lived Experience • Peer-to-peer support; • Survivor voices lead the process; • Hire people with lived experiences as consultants. • Include sex workers – they can and should be at the forefront of detecting cases of human trafficking

  24. “Kids aren’t going to listen to teachers or service providers. Need person with current or recent lived experience. That’s who those kids will listen to. Thinking about the time I slipped through the cracks, I wouldn’t listen to teachers, probation officers, the people I would listen to were people on the streets. So I would ideally like to hear from people who are currently or had just left the trade….” (Manitoulin Island)

  25. Why and How?

  26. Root Causes • Poverty and Inequality • Racism • Colonization and legacy of residential schools • Domestic violence / VAW • Substance abuse • Neurobiology of trauma and mental illness • Exposure to child welfare • Male demand

  27. Vulnerabilities • Loneliness • Need for a sense of belonging • Isolation • Lack of awareness • Family dysfunction • Drug/alcohol use • Homelessness • Attraction to fast money

  28. Thank you! Miigwetch!! noraht.nipissingu.ca rnagy@nipissingu.ca noraht@nipissingu.ca

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