labour in the Asia Pacific region than in any other part of the world with the ILO
estimating that 9.5 million people in our region experience this kind of human rights abuse.
While statistics are truly unknowable, we can rely on official government statistics to
explain the dimension of trafficking in Australia. The Australian Government reports that for
the period January 2004 to April 2009, 131 people accessed the support for victims of
people trafficking program, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship referred 287
suspected victims of trafficking to the Australian Federal Police for assessment and the
Australian Federal Police investigated over 270 allegations of trafficking. The 2010
Trafficking in Persons Report (US Department of State) says that men and women from the
Asia Pacific region, including India, China South Korea and the Philippines are recruited by
unscrupulous employers and labour contractors to work in forced labour in agriculture,
viticulture, construction, and other sectors.
Currently at the Anti Slavery Project, we have 80 clients and the profile of our clients is
consistent with what is known about the overall pattern of trafficking in Australia. Most of
our clients are women from the Asia Pacific region. The majority were trafficked into
Australia from Thailand, the Republic of Korea and Malaysia. Others are from China, India,
Indonesia, and the Philippines. Most were trafficked into sexual servitude, and some were
subject to manifestly unreasonable debts, others were trafficked into forced labour in the
commercial hospitality industry, or domestic servitude, either through a relationship or
through another visa type. In Australia, most media and community focus on trafficking is
on trafficking for sexual servitude, rather than other forms of trafficking and exploitation. As
a result, identifying and protecting all victims of trafficking, regardless of the form of the
exploitation, is an ongoing challenge. This is especially difficult as most trafficked people in
Australia are migrant workers, holding genuine travel documents, and appropriate visas with
permission to work.
Ⅲ. Human rights protection and victim support in Australia
Australian Government Action Plan 2004
After considerable agitation from community, media and the establishment of a
Parliamentary Inquiry into Trafficking in Australia, the Australian Government implemented
the Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking in Persons in 2004. Prior to the implementation of
the Action Plan, the focus was on identifying unlawful non‐citizens for immigration
compliance purposes, while traffickers had effective immunity from Australian laws.
The Government’s Action Plan was said to have four central pillars – prevention,
detection and investigation, criminal prosecution, and victim support and rehabilitation.
70 ❙ Seoul International Conference Against Human Trafficking in Migrant Women