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Report on New Delhi Seminar

Nancie Caraway, Trafficking Project, Globalization Research Center, University of Hawaii
December 27, 2004

The "Cross Border Movements and Human Rights" seminar in New Delhi, India in January 2004, sponsored by the Centre for Feminist Legal Research in New Delhi (CFLR) was unique in form, content and methodology. The small group of theorists, activists, researchers and scholars (21 participants from India, Canada, US, Eastern Europe and Asia) gathered around a seminar table, eschewing formal paper presentations to grapple face-to-face with the existing human trafficking framework and to analytically move beyond the fatalistic critique that "the anti-trafficking framework has been highjacked by states."

As one of the organizers, Jyoti Sanghera (OHCHR Adviser on Trafficking) said to the group in introductory remarks, "We want to center the transnational female migrant subject on her journey" as our analysis of anti-trafficking practices proceeds. The goal of the seminar cites the principal protagonist as the female migrant subject "whose objective reality is integrally linked to globalization, migration, labour and struggle for her basic rights as a human being."

The operative principle of "Do No Harm," guided the politics of presenters. Central to this focus was the discussion of strategies for undermining the risks encountered by migrant women: trafficking, forced labor and additional victimization in the course of receiving "anti-trafficking" programs such as corruption, raids, migration restrictions. As a critical sub-text to the trafficking discussion, it was noted that today the complex and contradictory nature of human rights discourse is used not only to pursue social justice but is mobilized as part of a new global arsenal for the pursuit of conquest, oil, markets and even regime change. The "Do No Harm" principle applies to NGOs and victim service providers—as well as traffickers and states.

Ratna Kapur, CFLR director, described how cross border movements are becoming more perilous and restrictive: fingerprinting, ethnic profiling, cultural exclusions, policing and moral surveillance. In the post-9-11 scenario, both legal and non-legal approaches to migration proliferate under the guise of "national security," and the "Global War on Terror." Such security concerns of the national state become license for harsh and anti-democratic policies: tightening immigration, strengthening border controls, the phenomenon of a "cultural panic" is apparent in many regions of the North and developed Asia which treat the “immigrant Other” as a cultural contaminant. These ideologies coupled with a conservative sexual morality and a protectionist approach to women of the Global South tend to stigmatize the migrant's culture as backward and uncivilized.

Critically engaging the proliferation of anti-trafficking initiatives, seminar participants debated whether to dismiss the current framework because of its manipulation by states wishing to restrict migration and provide legal justification for deporting – rather than assisting – trafficking victims. Such claims about state domination posit the State as a "bad" actor in contrast to the benevolent and "good" NGO. Participants discussed the role of NGOs as being culpable of producing simplistic images of “trafficked victim” on the one hand and “trafficker” on the other as organized crime. Such dichotomous thinking has led to the current situation where anti-trafficking funding is increasingly directed to law-enforcement, rather than victim assistance.

Seminar discussions evaluated how NGO involvement in anti-trafficking interventions has led to the propensity to focus on action—at the expense of broader conceptual and policy considerations. This is in part due to the rush for funding from donor-agencies who selectively fund only certain projects which can manifest “anti-legalization” policies and have such positions on prostitution. The donor-NGO nexus was seen as problematic and often leads to the "out-sourcing" of government's jobs to NGOs. By certifying which women qualify as "trafficking victims," NGOs identify for the State which to deport. Conference documents worry that "big" players are driving out local, community-based groups which assist victims.

Participants discussed the implications of the law and security framework – and considered approvingly the labour framework as a needed reform in anti-trafficking strategy. The seminar identified significant positive policy advances contained in the UN Migrant Workers Convention which came into force in July 2003. Conference participants look to this instrument as the first international document that provides an affirmation of migrant workers' rights – and, importantly, acknowledges for the first time, the rights of undocumented migrants.

In its goal to center the migrant female subject, and to prevent her from turning into a trafficked woman, the seminar concluded with the caveat: Globalizing Human Rights Alongside the Globalised Female Migrant. Urging caution to ensure that the idea of "global citizenship" does not reproduce the inequalities of economic globalization, participants examined the relationship between a migrant woman from the Global South and female employer of the Global North. "How should the relationship of ostensible power between the women of different hemispheres and classes be taken into account in a gender sensitive and feminist approach to trafficking?" – asks the conference's concluding remarks.

The seminar repeatedly pointed out that "hyper-mobility of capital, technology, information and expertise has been accompanied by a parallel hyper-mobility of people, especially women, who cross borders, challenging the most basic notions of women's reproductive labour, sexuality, community, nation, culture and citizenship." This complex matrix is essential to gender examinations of human trafficking.

And while the seminar did not advocate rejecting the existing anti-trafficking framework entirely, nor the international laws and instruments dealing with cross border movements, the existing framework was critically represented as a "monster" which has come to occupy a key spot in contemporary social justice discourses. The urgent task for human rights advocates, it was urged, is to seek a shift in the discourse from within while creating a new frame that justly centers the rights of the transnational migrant.

Copies of the seminar documents may be obtained from the Centre for Feminist Legal Research web-site: www.cflr.org