UNIAP | no-trafficking.org | Initiatives: Worst Offenders Project

Activity Summary

The Worst Offenders Project: Why is this new approach necessary?

Like all forms of organized crime, trafficking is a business. For those at the end of the trafficking chain, who are generally complicit in the most egregious forms of exploitation, it is currently a business which yields significant profit, at little or no risk. Supply of potential victims is plentiful and profits from exploiting victims accrue over time. Compared to drug trafficking, where profits are one-off, the chances of being apprehended and successfully prosecuted are low, and punishments less severe. It is not hard to see why human trafficking is an appealing proposition.

To date, law enforcement responses in human trafficking throughout the world are as likely to target victims as perpetrators, particularly illegal migrants or those involved in the sex trade. When law enforcement does go after the perpetrators, it tends to target the smaller links in the trafficking chain, the recruiters and transporters, rather than the managers and owners of institutions into which people are trafficked. Most of the former group are easily replaceable. The current focus of the human counter-trafficking sector on a wide range of interventions, rather than more squarely on the perpetrators of the worst forms of trafficking and exploitation, inadvertently limits the focus on the actions of such officials.

Taken together, all of these factors create a virtual impunity among those who benefit most from the trafficking crime.

Worst Offenders Project

To date, counter-trafficking efforts in the Greater Mekong Sub-region have not given sufficient attention to the trafficking criminal justice response.

Prosecutions in human trafficking cases are complex and rely on testimony from the victims for convictions. Victims of trafficking are often intimidated or coerced by the perpetrators, and the number and quality of prosecutions is weak. Sometimes low level brokers or ‘handlers’ of the victims are surrendered to authorities while those who organise and control the exploitative operationcontinue their business.

Through its ‘Worst Offenders Project’, UNIAP collaborates with government and non-government partners to increase the number and quality of prosecutions. The Worst Offenders Project focuses on cases of exploitation in which the intent to exploit is clear and the exploitation clearly egregious. It direct efforts towards prosecuting those who are profiting most from the crime.

Partners in this project include the Asia Regional Trafficking in Persons Project (ARTIP), and other organisations which work closely with law enforcement partners on training and capacity building in the region. Together, UNIAP and partners seek to build capacity in the criminal justice response, improve pro-active intelligence gathering and address other barriers to successful criminal justice systems.

Complimentary initiatives include COMMIT, under which the Mekong governments work closely with UNIAP, SIREN, under which brokering networks in abusive environments are monitored, and Support to Underserved Victims which provides support to victims who are unable to access counter-trafficking services.