Abstract

The chapter discusses how human trafficking law operates in parallel with refugee law. human trafficking has increasingly become a focal point for a political debate and an object of law-making. This has resulted in the adoption of various anti-trafficking instruments at global and regional levels. These operate in parallel with international refugee law and other human rights norms that protect individuals from refoulement. It is thus important to investigate how the two regimes, i.e., the anti-trafficking regime and the protection regime, relate to each other. The chapter describes the six points of interaction but concludes that Whilst European anti-trafficking framework contains binding obligations to assist and protect victims of human trafficking, the universal framework is very weak and that the anti-trafficking and the interrelated anti-smuggling measures adopted by states have a negative impact on the refugees in terms of their possibilities to leave countries of origin and to access the territory of countries of asylum.