In the United States and internationally, state actors routinely fail to recognize and identify survivors of trafficking with fateful consequences: survivors are arrested, detained, criminalized, and even unceremoniously deported in violation of survivors’ rights to protection and remedy. This practice is widespread. The majority of survivors in the United States reporting negative encounters with law enforcement while being trafficked (including arrest and detention), and its consequences are dire. Criminalized survivors are retraumatized by the system and suffer a myriad of societal consequences of their criminal records, including barriers to employment, housing, voting, child custody, education, immigration, and travel. This presentation focuses on advocacy strategies for ending the criminalization of trafficking survivors. First, it presents the unlawful practice of criminalizing survivors, including the reasons for the persistence of this practice. Next, it examines the key legal instruments and norms violated by this practice. Third, it presents the human rights mechanisms that advocates may engage at an international, regional, national, and state level in pursuit of an end to wrongful criminalization. In this discussion, the presentation offers multifaceted strategies and methods for advocates to advance the recognition and identification of survivors—from the international to the local. It seeks to empower any advocate on how to use human rights and civil rights advocacy strategies to hold state actors to account and advance change in this critical area. The presentation is accessible for all advocates (lived experience experts included) but requires a baseline understanding of human trafficking, its nature, and dynamics.
Trigger Warning: This presentation contains information (written, spoken, or visual) that may be triggering or (re)traumatizing to attendees.
Caroline Pizano is an attorney and social worker with over ten years of experience working on gender-based violence and human trafficking. She currently represents survivors in criminal record clearing cases and serves as Adjunct Professor of Law at St. John’s University, where she teaches on human rights and human trafficking.