1. INTRODUCTION

01.

INTRODUCTION

For over forty years, Sri Lanka has been sending its citizens overseas for work, with a strong government-instituted system in place to facilitate this out-migration process. The benefits from such migration for work trajectories are well recorded and recognised, especially in terms of the economic benefits to be reaped from such migratory patterns. In 2016 alone, foreign remittances, of which a little over 50 per cent was generated from the Middle East region, amounted to US$7.2 billion (Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), 2018)) – constituting over 8 per cent of Sri Lanka’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (World Bank, 2018). Although there has been a slight decline in remittances in 2017, it continues to be the leading foreign exchange earner in Sri Lanka, offsetting Sri Lanka’s trade deficit by approximately 70 per cent (Sanderatne, 2018) and thus making migrant workers in some sense, the most valuable export Sri Lanka possesses at present.

Commodifying human labour, however, has its inherent challenges. Although the GoSL has played a proactive role in facilitating the labour migration process specifically of lower skilled migrant worker categories with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Exchange (SLBFE) assigned as the regulator, there continue to be concerns raised regarding irregular migration, unfair and exploitative recruitment practices, and the working and living conditions that women and men experience while working overseas. Such instances garner major media coverage, especially with physical abuse meted out against female domestic workers dominating the news at times (Abeyasekera, and Jayasundere, 2015). While it would be misleading to state that all migrant workers experience difficult working and living conditions, rarely are the workers’ narratives further probed and investigated in terms of forced labour and/or human trafficking frameworks.

However, two principal factors impede positioning the experiences of the migrant workers within a framework of forced labour and trafficking. First, is the inherent challenges associated with defining what constitutes these processes. Second, is the lack of awareness about forced labour/human trafficking in the public. The United Nations Officer for the High Commissioner frames human trafficking as the process through which individuals are placed or maintained in an exploitative situation for economic gain. Trafficking is not limited to within a country but can transcend national borders. But it is difficult to find reliable information on trends and numbers of those trafficked (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner , 2014, p.1).

The United Nations (UN) protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children (The Palermo Protocol) was signed by members of the UN in 2000. The protocol defines human trafficking as:

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. (Palermo Protocol)

There is also a general understanding that trafficking is made up of three “constituent elements” - the act (what is done), the means (how) and the purpose (why) (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes (UNODC), 2018)). The main strategy in addressing issues related to human trafficking thus adopts the three pillars of, prevention of trafficking in persons, protection of victims of human trafficking and prosecution of trafficking offenders (UNODC, 2018). The understanding of the constituent elements and the three pillars must form the basis of any constructive action. However, when considering trafficking and forced labour, whether trafficking always leads to forced labour conditions, is debatable.

In this sense, the forced labour indicators drawn up by the ILO on the basis of The Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), are more useful. Rather than viewing forced labour as an element arising out of human trafficking, human trafficking is embedded