Suchergebnisse

This article explores the challenges involved in differentiating between human trafficking and migrant smuggling, and their implications for human rights protection. Exploitation is dismissed as a hallmark of trafficking, with reference to situations of trafficking that occur without exploitation, and migrant smuggling that involves exploitation. The consent of smuggled migrants is similarly rejected as a signifier of smuggling, given the irrelevance of consent in human trafficking. Discussion of stigmatisation of migrants willing to migrant irregularly, and the simplification of their plight, leads to consideration of rights-based distinctions between the two phenomena. Assumptions made about the types of abuses that occur in trafficking and smuggling scenarios are explained as detracting from human rights protections of rights-holders. Ultimately, it is asserted that the labels of 'trafficked' and 'smuggled' should not be determined on the basis of human rights abuses, but should be confronted irrespective of which label has been allocated.

This article discusses three cases from China, India and Morocco in which courts in the United Kingdom have considered the issue of previous convictions for the purposes of sentencing and considering the issue of whether the accused is of bad character. The author highlights the different approaches taken by the different courts and argues that there is a need for guidelines to be developed for courts to follow in deciding whether or not to admit convictions from courts outside the European Union. This would strengthen the accused's rights to a fair trial in criminal proceedings.

Although the legal notion of slavery has been defined in article 1 of the 1926 Slavery Convention, it is currently being widely used to encompass various practices of abuse, oppression and exploitation. Trafficking in human beings is one such practice, extensively being referred to as a contemporary form of slavery. This article attempts to establish the legal criteria on the basis of which trafficking in human beings can constitute slavery and to define states' obligations deriving from it, in the light of the recent relevant case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, and to highlight its impact to the current European anti-trafficking regulatory framework.