Human trafficking is a grave violation of human rights and a serious international crime that affects roughly 40 million people and every country worldwide. In 2018, 228 people were identified as potential victims of trafficking in Scotland, 59 of them for sexual exploitation. However, given the covert nature of the crime, the number of identified victims in Scotland is not an accurate depiction of the magnitude of the problem. The Home Office suggests that there are around 10,000 to 13,000 victims of trafficking in the United Kingdom (UK). Human trafficking for sexual exploitation is a form of gender-based violence mostly affecting women and girls, who are estimated to be 71% of all victims. Clearly it is a highly gendered phenomenon.
Sexual exploitation means that the vulnerability of a victim is abused by a person in a position of power for sexual purposes through different methods of coercion, physical and psychological control. The trafficking experience has severe physical, psychological, social, legal, and economic effects for victims. To avoid the detrimental effects of inadequate support, victims require timely and continuous access to support, both immediately and in the longer term.
NEEDS AND RIGHTS OF FEMALE VICTIMS OF SEXUAL TRAFFICKING
The immediate protection and support requirements of victims include access to secure accommodation and support, urgent health care (including physical and psychological health care), and access to free legal counselling and representation. Victims should have access to sufficient information about the kinds of services and support they can receive. In order to facilitate this, translation and interpretation services should be available where necessary. To ensure that the victims are able to make their decisions freely, the advice given to them should be non-coercive and non-conditional, meaning that it should not depend on cooperation in criminal proceedings.
All support measures should consider the specific vulnerabilities of the trafficking victims and be trauma-informed, culturally appropriate, and gender-sensitive. The victims should have enough time to recover so they can make an informed decision about what they want to do next and whether they want to pursue civil or criminal action against their trafficker. To ensure that victims are protected from secondary-victimisation and further trauma, victims should be able to access long-term support services such as long-term follow-up medical treatment.
However, victims of trafficking face significant difficulties and barriers for accessing the needed support. This can undermine prevention efforts as it increases the risk of re-trafficking. The Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, a group comprising nine UK-based organisations and set up to monitor the implementation of European anti-trafficking legislation in the UK, voiced considerable criticism about the support system in the UK.
Looking specifically at Scotland and by talking to professionals working with victims of human trafficking, I was able to get more insight into the current challenges to efficient support provision for female victims of human trafficking. There are two main organisations in Scotland for support service provision: Migrant Help and Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance (TARA). Just Rights Scotland is another important organisation that provides free legal advice within the TARA service premises. These organisations identified the main challenges facing victims as: (1) lacking awareness of support services, (2) the capacities of the services and resource constraints (especially for long-term support), (3) potential geographic constraints to service provision, and (4) potential systemic barriers to high-quality support for trafficked people. The next sections consider these challenges in more detail.
AWARENESS OF SUPPORT SERVICES
There is a huge discrepancy between the estimated victims of trafficking in the UK and the number of people identified as potential victims of trafficking through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). The NRM is the framework in the UK that identifies potential victims of modern slavery and refers them to organisations that can provide them with the appropriate support. The current system fails to identify hundreds of other trafficking victims. If victims are not identified, they have no means of receiving protection and support.
Awareness by victims of their entitlements and the support services available is almost non-existent. This can be partly attributed to the background of the victims. Although the root causes of trafficking are various and differ between countries, common patterns that can be seen as drivers to human trafficking include poverty, oppression, the lack of social and economic opportunity, and the lack of human rights. Victims often come from an impoverished background and from countries where no comparable support network exists. This explains why accessing support is mostly not proactive and most identified victims enter the system through referrals.
The high number of referrals emphasises the crucial role of so-called “first responder organisations,” authorities that identify potential victims and are authorised to refer them into the NRM. Some first responders lack clarity about their role, arguably a result of inadequately training to successfully identify potential victims. The lack of awareness by first responders is a crucial issue and means that hundreds of people are slipping through the cracks in the system.
But what about victims that are identified? Are they aware of their rights and entitlements?
The victims of human trafficking have the right to information about their entitlements. The lack of information about their rights is one of the main barriers, highlighting the necessity for legal advice. This advice must be given in simple and understandable language and in a safe way, to allow the individual to engage with the complicated processes. One expert criticised the lack of informed consent when people are referred into the NRM. Victims might not be aware that the referral is entirely voluntary, of what exactly the process entails, and that their statements might be subjected to a lot of scrutiny. This could be difficult for them to go through, especially considering the pre-existing trauma.
The interviewees also highlighted that the quality of legal advice is constrained by the lack of knowledge about human trafficking in some law firms, along with funding challenges. Even though private practice firms will be able to obtain legal aid for taking such cases, the profit environment of a private practice law firm might not allow for them to dedicate the amount of time to the client which would be needed to consider the special needs of the victims.
CAPACITY AND RESOURCES
Trafficking experiences are complex. They involve individual stories that require individual and tailored advice. The support organisations for victims of trafficking in Scotland (such as Migrant Help, TARA, and JustRights Scotland) have years of experience in working with people who are traumatised. They aim to make their services as trauma-informed as possible by being fully aware of what the victims are going through and realising their needs. There are, however, some concerns about the ability of the support system to provide for all the needs of the victims, due to capacity constraints.
Capacity constraints not only limit the support given to victims in the legal realm but also limit the robustness of the services provided to human trafficking victims in general. One interviewee identified funding to be the most challenging aspect to effective service provision. Capacity constraints decrease the ability of the organisations to individualise support. Another interviewee speculated that the increasing referrals led to a stretching of the services so that the support grows less thorough.
The financial situation becomes even more challenging for victims who do not have a right to remain in the UK. Such victims have no recourse to public funds and cannot access mainstream support such as benefits or housing. This also highlights another challenge, namely that a victim’s immigration status can determine what they can access, which limits some of the services that organisations can provide.
Financial constraints are even more problematic when considering the long-term support needs of victims. The specific vulnerabilities of trafficking victims mean that they might need more time to be able to disclose information because of their trauma. As the support provided by the NRM is time-limited (support is offered through the NRM for 90 days or until a conclusive ground decision is made), the current system is not able to adequately provide for the long-term needs of victims.
Although the organisations face significant resource challenges in providing their services, all interviewees agreed that they were still able to provide the most necessary crisis support and cover the basic needs. However, it is questionable whether this is sufficient, especially in the long run, and whether all victims receive the holistic support that they need.
POTENTIAL GEOGRAPHIC CONSTRAINTS
Interviewees also identify geographic constraints as a key challenge to accessing services. Most support services are Glasgow-centric whereas victims of human trafficking have been identified in all 32 local authorities across Scotland.
It can be challenging for organisations to provide support in more remote areas. However, the main support organisations have nation-wide services and have ways to provide support in more remote places. Increasing the awareness, especially in remote locations of the available support and about the opportunity for victims to relocate, would also make support more accessible to victims regardless of their initial location.
SYSTEMATIC BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE SUPPORT SERVICES
The UK government’s policy focus has not always been victim-centred and human-based but rather focuses on immigration and security concerns. The Anti-trafficking Monitoring Group severely criticises this criminalisation, security, and migration focus.
This criticism was shared by the interviewees, who argue that human trafficking is often over-simplified and discussed solely as an immigration issue. The asylum process is a second legal process running parallel to the NRM, and it can sometimes hinder victim support. The asylum system is rigid and not set up to deal with or take account of human trafficking.
The weight given to immigration also partly justifies the fear that many victims have regarding their immigration status and their right to stay. Many victims are not willing to engage with authorities as they fear prosecution or deportation. The fear seems even more justified when considering that the Home Office is one of the competent authorities to process cases through the NRM system.
The Home Office decides both immigration matters and the status of trafficking victims. In the interviews, it became clear that the Home Office looks at human trafficking through the same lens as immigration. Thereby the existing culture of disbelief of victims, based on an anti-immigrant, anti-foreign policy and “othering” of asylum seekers and refugees extends to victims of trafficking.
CONCLUSION
The support needs of female victims of sexual trafficking are complex and the system currently in place in Scotland is only partially able to cover them. This piece does not aim to cast a dark shadow on the invaluable support provided by organisations in the field. From the interviews it is clear that there is a will to work together among support organisations to provide the necessary support and to learn from experiences to improve the existing services in Scotland. This work shines some light on the challenges and constraints faced by female victims of sexual trafficking in the support system. The challenges identified include: lacking awareness and information, failing identification of (potential) victims, capacity and funding constraints, geographic limitations, the time-limited nature of the support system, and the conflation of human trafficking with immigration. Improving these is crucial to adequately identify, protect, and support victims of this gross human rights violation.
Sophia is an aspiring solicitor. She has a Master's degree in Economics and International Relations from the University of Aberdeen and is currently studying the Graduate Diploma of Law. Her fields of interest are international human rights, immigration and refugee law.