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Trafficking Contracts: Myth or Reality? Re-Examination of Consent in Human Trafficking

Victor Nnamdi Opara, School of Law, New York University
onwuekwe@ucalgary.ca

Of recent the issue of what legal boundaries should be drawn where a woman willfully consents to be trafficked has made waves in trafficking discourses. It has engaged the international community, human rights practitioners and advocates. The international community has recently demonstrated willingness for a new instrument that holistically addresses trafficking: U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.1 On what the definition of trafficking should be, some states were of the view that only trafficking that involves forced prostitution should be addressed by the Protocol, and that where a victim consented to be trafficked, such consent should remove the conduct from the jurisdiction of the Protocol. Most NGOs rejected this position. Finally a consensus was reached which made consent to exploitation irrelevant under certain specified conditions. Notwithstanding this consensus, the issue of whether trafficking can be legalized by consent of the trafficked under any circumstances is left unanswered. The existence of contract prevents society from inquiring into what happens after the contract is formed. In view of this societal attitude towards victims of trafficking, my analysis undertakes the task to piercing the contractual veil by using true-life narratives of African women trafficked to Europe for prostitution in order to illustrate the gloomy sides of a trafficking contract. The analysis attempts to explore the potential ramifications of the issue of consent in order to bring to the fore more thought-provoking illustrations of the absence of liberty and freedom that characterize a trafficking contract.
1. U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, U.N. Doc. A/53/383 (2000),available at
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/trafficking_convention.html,
also at http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/convention_%20traff_eng.pdf,
and at http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/index.htm (last visited Sep. 20, 2005).

Emerging Issues in the Trafficking of African Women for Prostitution

This paper explores crucial issues that impact on trafficking in Africa. It begins by locating the origin of trafficking in Africa and proceeds to bring to the fore multiple problems that African trafficked women undergo in their home and destination countries. These factors underpin trafficking in Africa, and include androcentric cultural practices, political insecurity and crushing economic depressions in Africa, insecurity in destination countries, exploitation from traffickers and pimps, exposure to diseases, racial discrimination in destination countries, language barriers, illiteracy or inadequate education, abject poverty, etc. These problems increase the vulnerability of African women to trafficking while at the same time making trafficking an attractive business for syndicates. This paper argues that these problems cannot be ignored. The international community cannot treat the symptoms of trafficking without diagnosing the disease. Trafficking must be tackled from the roots. In other words, for there to be any progress in the eradication of trafficking, both the African continent and the international community have to address all these problems because they are the breeding grounds for trafficking. Structurally the paper comprises three Parts. Part I gives the general dimensions of trafficking, outlines the history of trafficking in Africa, lays down a compendium of trafficking statistics, gives an overview of the factors influencing trafficking in Africa, and equally states the operative mechanisms of trafficking syndicates. Part II is a close-contextual analysis of African and international approaches to the eradication of trafficking and forced labor. Finally Part III embodies my recommendations and conclusions.