Whether forced into relocation by fear of persecution, civil war, or humanitarian crisis, or pulled toward the prospect of better economic opportunities, more people are on the move than ever before. Opportunities for lawful entry into preferred destinations are decreasing rapidly, creating demand that is increasingly being met by migrant smugglers. This companion volume to the award-winning The International Law of Human Trafficking presents the first-ever comprehensive, in-depth analysis into the subject. The authors call on their experience of working with the UN to chart the development of new international laws and to link these specialist rules to other relevant areas of international law, including law of the sea, human rights law, and international refugee law. Through this analysis, the authors explain the major legal obligations of States with respect to migrant smuggling, including those related to criminalization, interdiction and rescue at sea, protection, prevention, detention, and return.

The Trafficking Protocol makes an easy target for attack. Its origins lie in an attempt to control a particularly exploitative form of migration that was challenging the ability of States to control their own borders. Its parent instrument is a framework agreement to address transnational organised crime. While paying fleeting attention to the rights of victims, the Protocol, with its emphasis on criminalisation and border protection is nowhere near being a human rights treaty. On top of all that it does not even have a credible enforcement mechanism, allowing states parties wide latitude in interpreting and applying their obligations. Strangely, these seemingly insurmountable flaws have not stopped the Protocol’s emergence as perhaps the single most important development in the fight against human trafficking. Without the Protocol, arguments around definitions would have continued to block the evolution of principles and rules. Without the Protocol it is likely that the human rights system would have continued its shameful tradition of sidelining issues such as forced labour, forced sex, forced marriage and the ritual exploitation of migrant workers through debt. Most critically, the Protocol provided the impetus and template for a series of legal and political developments that, over time, have served to ameliorate some of its greatest weaknesses, including the lack of human rights protections and of a credible oversight mechanism.

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In 2004, largely in response to external developments, the predecessor to the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed a Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons with an explicit mandate to address the human rights aspects of trafficking. This article critically assesses the first decade of that mandate—identifying important achievements but also acknowledging substantial challenges in securing effective responses to trafficking that both protect and advance human rights. In looking ahead it considers the broader lessons that this experience may hold for the emergent global movement against human exploitation—and the place of human rights in the dynamic but often chaotic and schismatic environment that has emerged around trafficking over the past decade.

Having been guest editor of the very first issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review, it was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation of the editorial board to oversee the production of its sixth issue. Back in 2012 I identified the emergence of the Anti-Trafficking Review, thefirst specialist journal on human trafficking, as a watershed moment, signalling the transformation of‘trafficking’ from a niche (perhaps even a fringe) academic sub-discipline into a legitimate, substantial and discrete area of study. The past four years since its launch have vindicated that assessment. New specialist journals on trafficking and its variants have been launched, and the range and depth of research being undertaken in this field has significantly expanded. While law, sociology and human rights continue to be the dominant lenses through which trafficking is studied, analysed and explained, there is no denying the expanding and enriching influence of other disciplines: from geography to anthropology; from health sciences to migration studies. These changes in research and writing around trafficking have brought tangible benefits: helping improve our understanding of what is happening and why, as well as strengthening the evidence base on which credible, effective responses can be built.