Seeing the Unseen: Barriers and Opportunities in the Identification of Trafficking Victims in Indonesia (2018)
nexushumantrafficking
In many countries in the world, including in Indonesia, identification of trafficking victims remains one of the more challenging and vexing aspects of anti-trafficking efforts. Many trafficking victims are never officially identified or recognized as victims of human trafficking and, as such, essentially “fall through the cracks” of the anti-trafficking response. And yet the identification of trafficked persons is a critical, indeed necessary, step to combat human trafficking. Victims must first be identified before they can be offered assistance and protection. Identification is also essential for the criminal process to be triggered and to ensure trafficking victims’ access to justice. Understanding who is (and is not) identified as trafficked (and why this happens) is critical for improving the identification of Indonesian trafficking victims and, by extension, their access to protection and justice. As such, this paper considers patterns of both successful and unsuccessful identification of Indonesian trafficking victims who have been trafficked for various forms of labor, as well as the different issues that inform whether or not Indonesian trafficking victims are formally identified as trafficking victims. These include: the nature of trafficking, with victims isolated, controlled and “out of sight”; institutional challenges in the identification response; and the decisions and behaviors of trafficking victims themselves.
