Human trafficking involves the trade in people with the purpose of exploiting them, and it is widely practiced around the world, including in the ASEAN countries. Due to the increased pressure to fight this type of crime, the ASEAN member countries have formulated international treaties that seek to abolish TIP. This article offers a legal analysis of the ASEAN International Agreement on Trafficking in Persons and affirms that though the agreement has a strong framework, its implementation has several challenges that need increased regional cooperation and solid reforms.
ASEAN is a group of ten countries with different legal frameworks, cultures, and capacities of the member states’ economies. While it is an advantage for an organization to have diverse personnel, this has proven to have a number of difficulties in addressing the problem of human trafficking through a concerted and efficient effort. Nevertheless, it needs to be noted that ASEAN has shown a fairly good level of commitment and activity to combat TIP through a number of regional frameworks and activities linked to the issue.
ACTIP, the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children adopted in 2015, is the fundamental of ASEAN’s fight against this vice. ACTIP’s main goals are the fight against trafficking in persons including the protection of victims and cooperation between member states. Another instrument is the APA – the ASEAN Plan of Action Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children that outlines mechanisms of the ACTIP’s implementation.
ACTIP’s strategies entail public sensitization, policy, education and training, which are considered as deterrent measures to lower vulnerability to trafficking. The convention requires member states to passed domestic laws which make it criminal to traffic persons for any reason and to impose stiff penalties for the individuals involved in such acts. Another important area is victim protection for which ACTIP provides protection to victims and provide them with such necessities as legal aid, medical help, and vocational training. Perhaps importantly, ACTIP will reject criminalization of victims for offenses perpetrated as a consequence of trafficking.
According to the prosecution ACTIP demands strict police and judicial prosecution of traffickers, cooperation and mutual legal assistance, extradition, interchange and cooperation transnationally. One of its goals is to emphasize cooperation between member states, international organizations and non-governmental organizations based on the sharing of experience, statistics and information to improve the activities in the sphere in the region.
However, there are five major challenges that limit the effective implementation of the activity despite having a seem comprehensive framework encapsulated in ACTIP. The first, is that ASEAN as a grouping has legal and institutional structures, which vary greatly across member countries. Differences in legal constructions, implementation thresholds, and victim support frameworks make it challenging to synchronize laws and policies within the region. Certain countries could have limited anti-trafficking legislation which apart from this may have varying degrees of intolerance towards the offense and differ in the way they punish the traffickers and shield the victims.
Another challenge is capacity and resource limitation In this regard, capacity and resource limits limit the scope of possible action. Currently, most of the ASEAN nations are challenged with issues of inadequate funds, physical facilities and qualified human resource in the fight against trafficking. This entails lack of funds for services to victims, lack of specialized officers to handle crimes and inadequate education of judges or policemen.
Further, trafficking is usually not limited to a single country but rather it is a transnational phenomenon that requires effective cooperation between countries. However, legal structures, implementation bureaucracies, and sometimes distrust among the members affect the cooperation outcome, especially in circumstances needing extradition as well as mutual legal assistance.
Another challenge is in identification and provision of protection to the victims of trafficking. Majority of the victims are too scared to report because they fear their traffickers will get them in return and others do not trust law enforcement agents. To guarantee the provision of protection and support services to the victims is crucial and challenging at the same time due to the available funds and the differences in system functioning within member states.
However, there are several areas that can be further explored and strengthened in order to advance regional cooperation against TIP in ASEAN. One among the key requirements is the development of legal structures that can be easily integrated across the member states. ASEAN can strive to create model legislation and offer legal aid to countries so that their national legislation corresponds to ACTIP.
Another key instruction is enhancing the capacity of member states. This can be via organised training sessions, workshops, and seminars for the leaders of the police force, judiciary, other related agencies and the society at large. Increasing the efficiency of victim support services and guaranteeing financial stability in funding for such services can also lead to the improvement of the protection and support of victims.
The management of TIP therefore requires enhancement of confidence within mechanisms that facilitate the sharing of information, mutual legal assistance and cross border collaboration at the regional level. The implementation and establishment of a centralized database for trafficking cases and motivating the member states to come more frequent in their meetings and communications will help to establish better relation and cooperate effectively.
Prevention is key and campaigns that will educate the public are very important in combating this vice. TIP education can be introduced in the school systems of ASEAN and supported by civil society organisations and business leaders, but the campaigns must be regional in nature.
Last but not least, cooperation with agency/performance partners like the UNODC and the IOM helps to tap into technical assistance and good performing organization. Such partnerships could improve the efficiency of the region’s ability to fight against the traffic effectively.
On an international level, the more specific ASEAN International Agreement on Trafficking in Persons established the legal system against the human trafficking in the region adequately and sufficiently. Nevertheless, there is still large room for improvement of this process which requires collective efforts in developing the cooperation with the regions and implementing the strategic changes. In my opinion, through a set of legal harmonization, capacity building, strengthening ASEAN’s mechanism, raising awareness and involving international cooperation, ASEAN is capable of obtaining significant improvement on combating TIP and respecting the rights and dignity of the victims.
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