Wrong kind of victim? - Full Report One year on: an analysis of UK measures to protect trafficked persons

The report is not a comprehensive analysis of every trafficking or presumed trafficking case in the UK. Rather it is a qualitative assessment of anti-trafficking practice in the UK based upon extensive research amongst professionals who have come into contact with the system as currently practised and a review of some 390 cases (further details of the sources are outlined in Appendix 1). As such it is explicitly an exploratory piece of research aimed at illuminating the critical areas that should be of concern to the Government if they wish to ensure that British efforts to counter trafficking are compliant with the provisions of the Convention, to which they are a party. At the very least this study should provoke further, transparent and publicly available research by Government to quantify more precisely the problems that this qualitative research has so starkly raised. The fact that there is no national watchdog in place to monitor and evaluate anti-trafficking strategy, both made this study necessary and indicates a key recommendation of this report: that in order to deal with such a complex crime, which requires a sophisticated response from a range of government agencies, there is the need for a national watchdog to oversee national anti-trafficking efforts.

• Chapter 1 is the introduction which outlines the background to and the purpose of this report.
• Chapter 2 describes the key provisions of the Convention.
• Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 describe the key areas where British Government efforts to implement the Convention are most problematic. These relate apparent misunderstandings of key provisions of the Convention, a failure to address the entirety of the Convention, the delegation of considerable authority on identification to a flawed mechanism staffed by substantially
  unaccountable officials, and finally significant failures around the issues of child protection.
• Chapter 7 describes some problematic issues relating to investigation of trafficking and protection of presumed trafficked people.
• Chapter 8 discusses the potential value of a national rapporteur or trafficking watchdog.
• Chapter 9 outlines the conclusions and recommendations of the research. These, we argue, are intended to ensure the UK fulfils the obligations it has undertaken with the ratification of the Convention – notably relating to the protection of people who have been trafficked. This report also includes substantial appendices, including descriptions of the situations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the Monitoring Group’s recommendations for action in each.