Publications & Tools

“The Anti-Trafficking Review promotes a human rights-based approach to anti-trafficking. It explores trafficking in its broader context including gender analyses and intersections with labour and migration. It offers an outlet and space for dialogue between academics, practitioners, trafficked persons and advocates seeking to communicate new ideas and findings to those working for and with trafficked persons.
The journal presents rigorously considered, peer-reviewed material in clear English. Each issue relates to an emerging or overlooked theme in the field of anti-trafficking.”
This issue includes 14 articles drafted by leaders from sex worker-led organisations, Nadia van der Linde (Red Umbrella Fund) and others on the topic of sex worker organising.

OpenDemocracy has a wide range of argicles and reports on Sex Work within its Beyond Trafficking and Slavery Channel

Published in 2014, Issue 3 of the Anti-Trafficking Review focuses on money trails in the anti-trafficking sector, and is the first of its kind as to date there has been no research on how much is spent combating the human rights abuses that amount to human trafficking. This themed issue looks at money trails that reveal how anti-trafficking money has changed the world for the better or for worse.

Learn more: Are we really listening?

In 2017, Red Umbrella Fund commissioned research by Wendelijn Vollbehr on how sex worker-led organisations are dealing with the issue of human trafficking. She interviewed members of 13 organisations in 13 different countries. “The interviews addressed how the respondents defined and approached the topic of human trafficking, how they experienced anti-trafficking policies and practices, and if and how their organisations dealt with trafficking situations.”

An e-book with a collection of articles focusing on why anti-trafficking advocates should not hesitate supporting sex workers’ rights.

This volume focuses upon three main questions:
– Why are so many anti-trafficking organisations reluctant to take a clear position on the status of sex work?
– What are the main effects of fence-sitting upon politics and policy?
– What would encourage anti-traffickers to get off the fence and directly support sex workers’ rights?

“The Beyond Trafficking and Slavery editorial team is not on the fence. We strongly favour and support sex workers’ rights.”

Red Umbrella Fund Coordinator Paul-Gilbert Colletaz writes, ” Sex workers have suffered under the pandemic because most are excluded from both private and public support. Donors can change that.”

“Measures that restrict sex workers? movement and so-called “anti-trafficking” measures are connected. Sex work and trafficking are often conflated in law, policy and practice, including in border control and policing. Most of the discussion on trafficking in international policy spaces has ignored the impact of anti-trafficking laws and policies on sex workers’ mobility. Barriers to sex workers’ mobility make it harder for them to engage with politics and civil issues and impede their right to associate and organise. Sex workers around the world organise collectively to advocate for their human, health, and labour rights.”

“For racialised sex workers, many of whom are (undocumented) migrants, the racism and discrimination they experience is structurally rooted in a socio-political landscape that includes anti-sex work, anti-trafficking, and anti-immigration (ASWTI) laws and policies. This community report explores how racism is entangled in ASWTI legislation in Europe. To do so, the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) conducted a literature review on the history of sexualised racism in the European context and racism in global and national sex work policies and laws.”

The Donor-Activist Dialogue on Sex Work and Trafficking brought donors, anti-human trafficking advocates, sex workers’ rights activists, researchers, and academics from different countries together to:
– Understand some of the language and terms generally used to describe sex work, migration and trafficking, and how these concepts are inter-related but distinct.
– Identify the real-life consequences to sex workers and persons trafficked into the sex sector and their families of policies and programs that are premised on the notion that all sex work results from trafficking.
– Examine how to leverage existing models that approach sex work from a rights-based perspective to stop trafficking into the sex sector.
– Recommend how to support and implement anti-trafficking efforts that affirm the rights of sex workers and others affected by anti-trafficking legislation.
This report summarizes the presentations, discussions, and recommendations made at a two-day dialogue organized by CREA, NSWP and OSI held on 11-12 December, 2008 at Tarrytown, New York.

Abstract: In South Africa, the conflation of sex work with human trafficking means that migrant/mobile sex workers are often framed as victims of trafficking while arguments for the decriminalisation of sex work are discounted due to claims about the risks of increased trafficking. This is despite the lack of clear evidence that trafficking, including in the sex industry, is a widespread problem. Sex worker organisations have called for an evidence-based approach whereby migration, sex work, and trafficking are distinguished and the debate moves beyond the polarised divisions over sex work. This paper takes up this argument by drawing on research with sex workers and a sex worker organisation in South Africa, as well as reflections shared at two Sex Workers’ Anti-trafficking Research Symposiums. In so doing, the authors propose the further development of a Sex Work, Exploitation, and Migration/Mobility Model that takes into consideration the complexities of the quotidian experiences of migration and selling sex. This, we suggest, could enable a more effective and productive partnership between sex worker organisations and other stakeholder groups, including anti-trafficking and labour rights organisations, trade unions, and others to protect the rights and well-being of all those involved in sex work.

“This written submission is made on behalf of the Sex Worker Inclusive Feminist Alliance (SWIFA), a coalition of organizations including
Amnesty International, to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee), in response to its call for comments on the draft general recommendation on trafficking of women and girls in the context of global migration. Please also see Amnesty International?s accompanying submission IOR 40/2274/2020.

“The report is based on research conducted with sex worker organisations in seven countries: Canada, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, India, Thailand and New Zealand. It highlights cases where sex workers, or sex worker organisations, learnt of situations where a woman was experiencing violence, working under unacceptable conditions, or was brought to the industry through force or deception, for the purpose of exploitation. In these instances, sex workers resolved the issue as a collective, by providing advice and referral to other organisations, negotiating with the brothel owner/madam, chasing the pimp out of their area, or gathering money to help the woman return home.”

“Sex workers across the world are organising against criminalisation, which puts not just their livelihood at risk but their entire lives?and those of their loved ones. They are generally recognised as marginalised and highly vulnerable in today’s societies, embodying multiple layers of stigma because of the work they do, and also because they are often poor, lack formal education, belong to Indigenous or migrant populations, identify as trans or gay, or are single mothers. However, funding to support sex worker organisations and their community mobilisation efforts is scarce… Sex worker organisations call on funders to provide more funding that is long term and covers rent, salaries, trainings, legal services, and advocacy. They also want funders to speak up in support of sex workers? rights.” Written by former Coordinator Nadia van der Linde Time to Turn Up the Volume [Cited as N van der Linde, “Time to Turn Up the Volume”, Anti-Trafficking Review, Anti-Trafficking Review, issue 12, 2019, pp. 194-199, www.antitraffickingreview.org.] View

This 2017 research paper by DemandAT “takes a comprehensive approach to investigating demand and demand-side policies in the context of trafficking. The research includes a strong theoretical and conceptual component through an examination of the concept of demand in trafficking from a historical and economic perspective. Regulatory approaches are studied in policy areas that address demand in illicit markets, in order to develop a better understanding of the impact that the different regulatory approaches can have on demand. Demand-side arguments in different fields of trafficking, as well as demand-side policies of selected countries are examined, in order to provide a better understanding of the available policy options and impacts. Finally, the research also involves in-depth case studies; both of the particular fields in which trafficking occurs (domestic work, prostitution, the globalised production of goods) and of particular policy approaches (law enforcement and campaigns). The overall goal is to develop a better understanding of demand and demand-factors in the context of designing measures and policies addressing all forms of trafficking in human beings.”