FROM BONDAGE TO FREEDOM 80 is certainly “good enough”. Incorporation of a common understanding of trafficking into national legislation will allow Parties to cooperate and collaborate more effectively than ever before. Common definition will also assert in the urgent tasks of developing indicators and promoting uniform data collection. The Protocol recognizes the existence of both voluntary prostitution and forced prostitution. It intentionally does not define the phrase “exploitation of prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation” 204 because Government delegates to the negotiations could not agree on a common meaning. The traveaux preparatoires indicate that the Protocol addresses the exploitation of the prostitution of others and other forms of exploitation only in the context of trafficking in persons. Thus, the Protocol expressly permits a State to focus only on forced prostitution and other crimes involving force or coercion and does not require Government to treat all adult participation in prostitution as trafficking. Despite the above achievements, the definition of trafficking falls short in the area of trafficking in children. The definition only says that in case of establishing trafficking in children evidence of force or coercion is not required. But it does not include an explicit acknowledgement of the fact that children have special rights under international law and in particular in the light of the Convention on the Rights of the Children; that child victims of trafficking have special needs that must be recognized and met by the States. As pointed by the informal group consisting of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), in a joint submission to the Ad-Hoc committee that in dealing with child victims of trafficking, the best interests of the child including the specific right to physical and psychological recovery and social integration are to be at all times paramount. They called for making assistance and protection provisions for children non-discretionary or otherwise dependent on the decision of national authorities. However, a proposal to include the above and to expand the list of end-purposes of trafficking 204 Supra note 40, p.17. 205 ILO Convention 182 identifies the Worst Forms of Child Labour as: (a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom, and forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict; (b) the use, producing or offering of a child for prostitution, for production of pornography or for performance; (c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking in drugs a defined in relevant international treaties; (d) work which, by its nature of the circumstances in which it is carried out is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

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