Trafficking in Persons - Background
Trafficking in persons is a particularly repugnant form of transnational organised crime, involving the deception and degradation of hundreds of thousands of victims around the world
Few countries are immune. The Asia-Pacific region has become a hub for trafficking in persons, particularly for the purposes of sexual servitude. All countries – whether source, transit countries, or destination countries like Australia – have a responsibility to address this issue.
In international terms, relatively small numbers of persons are trafficked into Australia (although the exact number is not known). However, trafficking in persons is a repugnant crime and the Government takes its responsibility to combat this trade seriously.
The $20 million package announced today is a strong, well-considered and determined response to trafficking in persons and sexual exploitation. It builds on Australia’s effective existing approach to fighting this crime.
Australia has strong laws criminalising sexual servitude, slavery, deceptive recruiting and people smuggling for the purpose of exploitation. These offences carry heavy penalties of up to 25 years imprisonment for slavery, 15 years for sexual servitude and 7 years for deceptive recruiting.
Where the victim of sexual servitude or deceptive recruiting is under 18 years, higher penalties apply – 19 and 9 years respectively. The people smuggling for the purposes of exploitation offence carries a penalty of 20 years. These offences are all covered by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 as serious offences for which persons convicted can be required to forfeit all their property.
In recent months, the Australian Federal Police have charged eight people with sexual servitude, slavery and deceptive recruiting offences.
Commonwealth, State and Territory police services are co-ordinating the development of a national plan of action to enhance law enforcement efforts to combat trafficking in persons for sexual servitude. The AFP continues to negotiate Memoranda of Understanding with regional countries on developing police co-operation to combat transnational crime. These include trafficking in persons as a priority crime type.
Australia has also supported a number of anti-trafficking projects in our region through AusAID. The Minister for Foreign Affairs recently reaffirmed this commitment by announcing an $8.5 million project called Asia Regional Cooperation to Prevent People Trafficking.
This project is part of a broader package of Australian development assistance aimed at combating trafficking in women and children in the Asia Pacific region worth approximately $14 million. These efforts have continued quietly for several years and made a real impact on the problem.
These measures are complemented by the ongoing work of the Bali Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, which is co-chaired by Australia and Indonesia (held in Bali in February 2002 and April 2003) At the second Ministerial Conference, 28 Ministers from 32 countries in the Asia-Pacific region endorsed the work of the two Ad Hoc Experts’ Groups focusing on regional and international cooperation, and on legislation, law enforcement cooperation and document fraud.
Australia will participate in a legislation workshop to be run by Thailand and held in Malaysia this November. This workshop builds on a previous workshop in which China and Australia developed model legislation to develop laws criminalising people smuggling and trafficking in persons. Australia also sent a high-level delegation to the Republic of Korea’s recent and very successful trafficking and public awareness workshop.
The $20 million package announced today amounts to a significant commitment to achieving results.
Efforts need to be well co-ordinated and effective. The Australian Government recently conducted a detailed review of the approach to preventing these crimes, investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators, and supporting the victims.
The Minister for Justice and Customs personally met with some key NGO representatives to hear their ideas and perspectives. The review studied overseas practice and drew lessons from Australia’s own experiences.
The Government adopted critics’ best ideas on how to enhance the existing arrangements, and developed further improvements of its own.
The measures announced today include:
- The Australian Federal Police Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Team, a mobile strike force to strengthen the capacity to actively target and investigate trafficking syndicates and make a substantial impact on combating sexual servitude in Australia. The Team will have 23 members and will be located within the Transnational Crime Coordination Centre for national coverage and flexibility.
- A new Senior Migration Officer (Compliance) in Thailand, focused on trafficking in persons. This position will be responsible for implementing Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) initiatives to combat trafficking in persons across the Asian region, including working closely with local authorities and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in the identification of possible trafficking organisers and organisations.
- Closer links between AFP and DIMIA officers in the detection and investigation of trafficking and enhanced training on trafficking issues, ensuring that the existing close cooperation is further enhanced;
- New visa arrangements for potentially trafficked persons;
- Comprehensive victim support measures provided through a contracted case manager, including appropriate accommodation and living expenses and access for victims to a wide range of social support, legal, medical and counselling services.
- Enhancement of arrangements, including access to additional support, for the small number of potential victims who may be required to remain in immigration detention;
- Development of a reintegration assistance project for trafficking victims who are returned to key source countries in South East Asia;
- Improvements to legislation to comprehensively criminalise trafficking activity;
- Legislative amendments to make telecommunications interception available for Criminal Code offences of slavery, sexual servitude, deceptive recruiting and people smuggling with exploitation, and
- Ratification, once all domestic requirements are in place, of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.
The new measures address the critical areas of prevention, investigation and prosecution, and victim support and are designed to combat trafficking as well as provide comprehensive assistance to those who have already fallen victim to it.
The Government is confident this suite of measures put Australia at the forefront of best practice efforts to combat trafficking. The strategy is a further demonstration of Australia’s comprehensive, coordinated commitment to fight the trafficking of persons.