Human trafficking in Australia
Open-knowledge reference entry
Human trafficking in Australia is illegal under Divisions 270 and 271 of the Criminal Code (Cth). In September 2005, Australia ratified the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which supplemented the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Amendments to the Criminal Code were made in 2005 to implement the Protocol.
Australia's response to human trafficking has been evolving significantly since 2005. From the government concentrating mainly on sex trafficking, to placing more focus on labour trafficking, forced marriage, organ removal and criminal exploitation.
In 2017, the government investigated 166 trafficking cases, compared to the 105 of 2016, of which six defendants were prosecuted and five traffickers were convicted. Prosecutions from 2016 were continued in 2017 by the authorities against 14 defendants, in which one sex trafficker, and in another case four labour traffickers, were convicted.
The extent of human trafficking in Australia is difficult to quantify. However, it has been estimated that between 300 and 1000 persons are victims of trafficking a year. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) lists Australia as one of 21 trafficking destination countries in the high destination category.
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This entry incorporates text from “Human trafficking in Australia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.