Attachments
INTRODUCTION
Persons with disabilities are disproportionately trafficked, with women and girls with disabilities especially at risk. Trafficking can also cause new impairments or aggravate existing ones. Yet, there has been little documentation of the connections between trafficking in persons and the rights and experiences of persons with disabilities.1 This leads to gaps in understanding patterns of trafficking of persons with disabilities, how trafficking leads to new or exacerbates existing impairments, barriers that trafficked persons with disabilities face in accessing assistance and remedies, and how international law can address the trafficking-disability nexus. Often these gaps also mean that trafficking of persons with disabilities is not recognized as such. As a result, trafficked persons with disabilities are precluded from the prevention, protection, and remedies to which they are entitled as victims of both trafficking in persons and disability-based discrimination.
As a result of these gaps and failures, measures to prevent trafficking of persons with disabilities, protect trafficked persons with disabilities, and provide effective and accessible remedies are lacking. This briefing paper begins to fill that knowledge gap to ensure that all stakeholders comply with their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of persons with disabilities in the context of anti-trafficking efforts and in accordance with international law, including particularly the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [hereinafter CRPD].
This briefing paper, based on findings from primary2 and desk research, addresses the interplays between the rights of persons with disabilities and trafficking in persons by:
- providing core elements of the definitions of trafficking in persons and disability under international law and applying the definition of trafficking in persons to persons with disabilities;
- outlining key patterns of trafficking in persons with disabilities, including the factors that place persons with disabilities at increased risk of trafficking and how trafficking in persons may cause new, or exacerbate existing, impairments;
- detailing how international anti-trafficking, human rights, humanitarian, criminal, and refugee laws apply concurrently to require States to prevent, investigate, and prosecute trafficking of persons with disabilities, as well as to protect victims; and
- identifying core challenges as well as opportunities for addressing the nexus of disability and trafficking in persons by using trafficking and disability rights lenses.
The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for States, United Nations (U.N.) entities, and civil society.