At long last!
A few years ago, the Council of Europe provided its technical support to the Maltese authorities to design and implement a new Anti-trafficking Strategy and Action Plan under international standards in this area.
The aim was to ensure that the strategy follows a human-rights-based, gender-sensitive, interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach, covering prevention, protection and assistance of victims; access to justice, including compensation; an effective criminal justice approach; and international cooperation.
We now have in place a National Strategy Against Human Trafficking intended to prevent and strengthen the fight against human trafficking while providing support to its victims. It also comes with an action plan to cover the period 2024-2030.
Over the years, Malta has had innumerable national policies and strategies, but this one against human trafficking has long been coming.
Unfortunately, we have never fully complied with the minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking. While our country is reputed to be a prime destination country for Eastern European women subjected to forced prostitution and third-country nationals subjected to forced labour, we have hardly registered any progress in identifying, prosecuting, convicting and punishing human trafficking offenders.
Hopefully, this strategy will now provide the necessary impetus to up our efforts to defeat human trafficking. In this sense, therefore, kudos to the Parliamentary Secretary for Equality and Reforms, Rebecca Buttigieg.
Simply having a look at the 2022 Eurostat statistics on human trafficking within the EU should provide a highly disproportionate Maltese statistic when compared to the rest of the EU. A meagre figure of 22 victims of human trafficking were identified in our country, while in the rest of the European mainland, it was over 10,000, with many of them convicted of this far-reaching criminal offence of human trafficking.
Clearly, then, Malta will have to show its mettle in its fight against human trafficking.
Trafficking in persons in Malta for sexual exploitation was already a criminal offence under the White Slaves Traffic (Suppression) Ordinance (Chap. 63). The White Slave Traffic (Suppression) Ordinance transposed the 1904 International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic into national law.
Following Malta's commitment to the United Nations Protocol to Prevent and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Act III (titled Of The Traffic of Persons) was introduced in the Criminal Code in 2002.
Malta signed the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings on May 16, 2005, and ratified it on January 30, 2008. It entered into force on May 1, 2008.
Following the adoption of new legislative amendments in 2013, punishment for human trafficking cases ranges from six to twelve years of imprisonment.
It was only in 2018 that the Maltese authorities formally identified, for the first time, a child victim of trafficking who had arrived in Malta in 2018 as an unaccompanied child.
With this background and, now, with the national strategy just launched, the battleground is set for a new and more effective inroad to ousting or, at least, minimising human trafficking.
With its action plan, the strategy should, with time, bring about increased efforts to genuinely and expeditiously investigate and prosecute human traffickers of all sorts.
Human trafficking, or modern slavery as it is commonly referred to, refers to anyone forced or misled into performing work or other activity (that may include the removal of body organs) against one's will and for the profit of others.
Modern slavery in any form may easily lead to a direct or indirect violation of the right to liberty and security, the right to be free from cruel or inhumane treatment, the right to freedom of movement and the right to life.
This is why it is now more important than ever to increase efforts to prosecute traffickers, including complicit officials, and seek harsh penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms to serve as an effective deterrent.
As a first step, the government has already strengthened migrant worker protections against labour trafficking with the implementation of strong regulations and oversight of recruitment companies that, one hopes, will be properly enforced, including prosecution for fraudulent labour recruitment.
The applicable laws have also been amended to ensure that trafficking victims have consistent early access to free legal aid.
There will be needed properly-trained staff and specialised officials who can proactively identify trafficking victims, including Maltese nationals, especially among vulnerable populations like children, migrant workers, asylum-seekers and individuals in commercial sex.
Front-line officials, police officers, prosecutors and judges will have to come together and coordinate activities with a focus on the use of psychological coercion and fraud as means of trafficking. This should lead to an improvement in sentencing practices by sensitising judges to the severity of trafficking crimes and the full range of criminal sanctions available.
Formal victim identification should also be forthcoming from labour inspectors, asylum case workers, health care professionals, social workers and NGOs.
In the meantime, the authorities need to seriously consider the implementation of license controls and oversee massage parlours to screen for trafficking victims. This particular pocket of possible human trafficking activities is not getting the attention it deserves from the authorities.
Trafficking in human beings is a serious and evolving crime that brings misery, often violence, and degradation to the victims. It is a heinous crime that knows no bounds.
Human trafficking is one of the greatest injustices of our time. Defeating it is a great moral calling of our time.
Dr Mark Said is a lawyer