Should human trafficking victims be prosecuted? That was the question before the European Court of Human Rights last week.
The Facts
In May of 2009, law enforcement found two Vietnamese boys (15 and 17 years old) in a “cannabis factory” in Cambridge (actually a four bedroom home). Human smugglers brought the boys into the UK and human traffickers compelled them to work. The traffickers locked the boys in the cannabis factory, took their identity documents, refused to pay them for their work, and threatened to kill them if they tried to escape.
Instead of receiving services and trauma informed care from the government, the authorities promptly charged the two boys with drug offenses, prosecuted them, and sentenced them to jail terms of 22 and 18 months, respectively.
The Case
More than a decade after the UK government punished these child trafficking victims, the European Court of Human Rights took up the case. This was the first time the Court had addressed the “non-punishment” or “non-penalization” principle which holds that: governments should not penalize human trafficking victims for the unlawful things a trafficker compels them to do.
The Strasbourg Court held that prosecuting these victims violated Article 4 of the Council of Europe’s Anti-Trafficking Convention. The Court also criticized the government for failing to honor its commitments in the EU Anti-Trafficking Directive and the UN Palermo Protocol. The case of V.C.L. and A.N. v. The United Kingdom now stands in support of the proposition that governments should care for human trafficking victims instead of prosecuting them.
Read the full decision here.