(To be checked against delivery)

BULLET POINTS

SECRETARY GENERAL SPEECH

Parliamentary Event on Trafficking in the UK organised by Amnesty International

Wednesday, 28 February 2007

· Naturally, I should like to begin by thanking Amnesty International UK for organising this Parliamentary event on trafficking in human beings, with a specific focus on the prospects for early signature and ratification by the United Kingdom of the Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings

· Trafficking in human beings is a euphemism for slavery. 200 years after this Parliament made the historic decision to abolish the slave trade, human beings are still bought and sold across the world, including the United Kingdom.

· Estimates show that at least 600 000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Of these people, more than 80 percent are girls and women, and 70 percent of them are forced into various forms of sexual servitude. But while forced prostitution is the most common reason for trafficking, victims are also traded for the purpose of forced labour, organ transplants and illegal adoptions.

· The Home Office estimated that in 2003, there were 4,000 trafficked women in the UK. Of them, the majority came from Eastern Europe, West Africa and South East Asia.

· I doubt whether anyone in this room believes that trafficking in human beings is not an appalling crime and a terrible human tragedy. The question is what we do about it.

· In the Council of Europe we brought together three groups of countries: countries of origin, transit and destination, and we managed to get agreement on a binding legal framework to combat trafficking. The underlying policy objective was to reinforce the prevention of trafficking, strengthen the prosecution of traffickers and protect the human rights and human dignity of the victims.

· As a result, in May 2005, the Heads of State and Governments of the 46 Council of Europe member States opened for signature a new legal instrument – the Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings.

· This Council of Europe instrument builds on the UN Palermo Protocol of 2004, but it reinforces and expands the action against trafficking in a number of important respects.

· To start with, under the Council of Europe Convention, the most basic protection and assistance measures, such as the access to medical treatment, translation and interpretation, counseling, information and legal representation and access to education for children, are all compulsory.

· Second, the Convention introduces a period of at least 30 days for recovery and reflection by the victims of trafficking with the possibility of obtaining a temporary residence permit which is not subject to agreement by the victim to cooperate with law enforcement authorities.

· The Convention also prohibits the punishment of victims of trafficking, but Governments in the countries of destination must act to discourage demand. In practical terms this means that, regardless of the legal status of prostitution in any given country, authorities should prosecute people who know that they are paying for sex with a victim of human trafficking.

· The focus on the protection of the victims of trafficking is backed by criminal law provisions aimed at reinforcing the prosecution of traffickers. As I understand it, the legislation in the UK would not require major changes to conform with the Convention as far as this point is concerned.

· The measures contained in our Convention have the potential to significantly reinforce our efficiency and effectiveness in the struggle against trafficking in human beings. That is why I am so disappointed that, almost two years after the Convention was opened for signature by the leaders of the 46 Council of Europe member states, which included the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, only 4 of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe have ratified it, and 16 have not even signed it.

· Of course, I welcome the fact that a few weeks ago the British Prime Minister announced that the United Kingdom would sign the Convention, but this is only the first step. Effective measures against trafficking require (first) ratification and (second) implementation of its provisions.

· Why the delay? Generally, we get two answers from our member states.

· The first is the bottleneck in the legislative procedure. I was a Member of Parliament here for 28 years, and I know very well how there is always more to do than there is time to do it. But at the end of the day, we must decide on priorities. If you need reasons to speed up our action against trafficking, you only need to take a walk any evening in any city in Europe. Everywhere you go, there are streets where women, many of them victims of trafficking, have been forced into prostitution. From time to time, they are rounded up by the police and deported to their countries of origin. In most cases, they will be forced back to slavery in some other street corner of Europe before the signatures on their deportation orders have had time to dry. Procrastination is the friend of forced prostitution.

· The second reason given by governments is the concern that the Council of Europe Convention might encourage illegal immigration.

· This is clearly a misunderstanding. The idea that thousands of illegal immigrants are all victims of trafficking is simply wrong. Behind every single illegal immigrant there is a human story, often a tragedy, but they are not all victims of trafficking. This distinction is crucially important, but it is frequently ignored.

· In short, while the main objective of those arranging illegal immigration is smuggling people across borders in return for money, the objective of trafficking is exploitation. This is a crime which may, or may not, involve the illegal crossing of a border.

· To put it even more bluntly, to treat a victim of human trafficking as an illegal immigrant is the same as charging a rape victim with obscene conduct. Similarly, the argument that many of the victims should know that their job description will go beyond exotic dancing carries the same weight as the argument that provocative dressing is an invitation to sexual assault. No one, under no circumstances, has the right to deprive other people of freedom and force them to perform acts which violate their human dignity and human rights.

· Part of the misunderstanding in my view lies in the existing legislation. Currently the asylum system is the main legal mechanism by which victims of trafficking can obtain long-term protection in the UK. Our Convention stipulates a different approach, based on a separate system of protection, assistance and possibility for a victim of trafficking – either to stay in the country of destination, or to return to her country of origin. If we mix up two different problems, we risk ending up with wrong solutions to both of them.

· And I want to emphasise that our Council of Europe Convention contains detailed provisions for the identification of victims. Failure to identify the victims is likely to deprive them of their fundamental rights and deprive the prosecution of the access to witnesses which the prosecutors need to win the cases against traffickers.

· I have already mentioned the 30-day minimum recovery and reflection period foreseen by the Convention to enable victims of trafficking to recover and decide whether or not to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities. This provision is not some woolly liberal idea plucked from thin air. It is based on experience in several European countries – experience which shows that dissociating the right to residence from willingness to co-operate with the police, eventually works better than conditionality. The Convention provides the possibility to obtain a temporary and renewable residence permit and also contains detailed standards to be observed in the proceedings for the return of trafficked people to their countries of origin.

· I understand that the Home Office plans to launch a UK-wide action plan on trafficking, possibly at the end of March, and that this will be the main tool through which the UK will meet its obligations under our Convention.

· However, by and large, the UK response to trafficking has so far been largely focused on tackling the organised crime aspect of the problem and paying for prevention and integration projects in the countries of origin. The same approach dominates policies in most EU member states. This is important, but it is not enough. It is based on the assumption that trafficking is the result of people from poorer countries trying to earn a better living in Western Europe. Of course, it is true to some extent, but we will not be able to fight trafficking effectively as long as we ignore the demand. It is symptomatic that 3 out of 4 countries which have already ratified the Convention are traditionally considered as countries of origin. This adds weight to the criticism that countries of origin are trying to meet their responsibilities while countries of destination are dragging their feet.

· I have already taken too much time, and I will conclude by simply expressing my hope that the UK will very soon join Albania, Austria, Moldova and Romania, and become a party to the Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings as a matter of urgency.