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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
In her article Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law, Janie Chuang insightfully describes transformations in the discourse on trafficking as it shifted from sex trafficking to human trafficking, and as human trafficking came to be understood as forced labor, and now modern day slavery. With each of these transformations, the United States government, self-anointed “global sheriff” of anti-trafficking efforts, deepened its emphasis on a prosecution-oriented strategy focused on individual perpetrator accountability. As an alternative trajectory, Chuang identifies and convincingly argues for a labor-rights approach that takes into consideration the structural causes of exploitation in the labor market, including poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and conflict.
1 Janie Chuang, Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law, 108 AJIL 610 (2014) [hereinafter Chuang, Exploitation Creep].
2 Janie Chuang, The United States as Global Sheriff: Using Unilateral Sanctions to Combat Human Trafficking, 27 Mich. L. Rev. 437 (2006); Chuang, Exploitation Creep, supra note 1.
3 Feminist scholars critical of the carceral response to women’s rights include Leigh Goodmark, Autonomy Feminism: An Anti-Essen-tialist Critique of Mandatory Interventions in Domestic Violence Cases, 31 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 1 (2009); Donna Coker, Shifting Power for Battered Women: Law, Material Resources, and Poor Women of Color, 33 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1009 (2000); Aya Grueber, The Feminist War on Crime, 97 Iowa L. Rev. 741 (2007). For a description of the feminist turn to criminal law on issues of sexual violence see Karen Engle, Feminism and its (Dis)Contents: Criminalizing Wartime Rape in Boznia and Herzogovina, 99 AJIL 778 (2005); Elizabeth Bernstein, Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime, sex, and rights, 41 Theory & Soc’y. 233 (2012).
4 In this comment, I am largely discussing sex trafficking, which raises issues of violence and exploitation distinct from those associated with sex work. In the sex-work context, the labor-rights frame offers many possibilities for rethinking violence and exploitation.
5 As defined by David Harvey, neoliberalism “proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.” David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism 2 (2005).
6 Kerry Rittich, The Future of Law and Development: Second-Generation Reforms and the Incorporation of the Social, in The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (David Trubeck & Alvaro Santos eds., 2006) [hereinafter Rittich, Second-Generation]; see also, Joseph Stiglitz, The Post Washington Consensus Consensus, The Initiative for Policy Dialogue.
7 Rittich, Second-Generation, supra note 6,at 206-207 citing James Wolfensohn, World Bank Comprehensive Development Framework (Jan. 21, 1999). Seealso, David Kennedy, The Rule of Law, Political Choices, and Development Commonsense, in The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (David Trubeck and Alvaro Santos eds., 2006).
8 In the international human rights arena, the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) established women’s equality as a priority. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Dec. 18, 1979, 1249 UNTS 13.
9 Rittich, Second-Generation, supra note 6, at 209.
10 World Health Organization, Addressing Violence Against Women and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (2005).
11 United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), The Facts: Violence Against Women and the Millennium Development Goals (emphasis added).
12 David Trubeck and Alvaro Santos, An Introduction: the third moment in law and development theory and the emergence of a new critical practice, in The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal 1 (David Trubeck & Alvaro Santos eds., 2006).
13 See, e.g.,Bina Agarwal, Gender and Command Over Property: A Critical Gap in in Economic Analysis and Policy in South Asia, 22 World Dev. 1455 (1994).
14 See Deborah Weisman, The Politics of Pretext: VAWA Goes Global, Cunyl.Rev.Vawa @ 20 (Dec. 6, 2014); See Patricia Erwin, Exporting U.S. Domestic Violence Reforms: An Analysis of Human Rights Frameworks and U.S. “Best Practices”, 1 Feminist Criminology 188 (2006); See Leigh Goodmark, Introduction in Comparative Perspectives on Gender Violence: Lessons from Efforts Worldwide (Rashmi Goel & Leigh Goodmarkeds. 2015); SeeAllegra M. McLeod, Exporting U.S. Criminal Justice, 29 YALE L. & POL’Y.Rev. 83 (2010) (discussing the export of U.S. criminal law frameworks).
15 Id.
16 For a full description of the tiers see United States State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report 2014.
17 For an in-depth review of trafficking indicators see Anne T. Gallagher & Janie Chuang, The Use of Indicators to Measure Government Responses to Human Trafficking, in Governance by Indicators (Kevin E. Davis et al. eds. 2012).
18 For one example of how abolitionist feminist activism aided in closing HIV services for sex workers in Cambodia, see, Joanna Busza, Prostitution and the Politics of HIV Prevention in Cambodia: A Historical Case Study, 15 Stud.Gender & Sexuality 49 (2014).
19 Bernard Harcourt, The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2012).
20 This may also explain, in part, why the feminists who critique carceral responses were less successful than those who have supported punitive responses to addressing violence against women, including sex trafficking.
21 McLeod, supra note 14, at 111-112 (discussing the focus on anti-trafficking efforts in the context of exporting criminal law generally).
Target article
Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law
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