Marguerite Russell
Topic: Women and Trafficking: International and Domestic Legal Issues and Challenges
This paper examines the economic and legal implications of trafficking in a world in which large numbers of women are trafficked across international borders each year, and the limitations on the protection afforded by national and international anti-trafficking laws. In practice, the very vulnerabilities of women victims of violence and abuse limits their access to or their ability to provide evidence within the domestic administrative or legal proceedings that are intended to give effect to international law obligations. Although national and international laws are often believed to provide women with protection under immigration and asylum laws when seeking to escape their country of origin, the practical, economic, and legal barriers that women in such situations encounter means that these laws all too often fail to provide women and girls meaningful protection from transnational criminal exploitation.