Trafficking in Slavery's Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa

Ranking States

221 11w Ranking States Tracking the State Effect in West African Antitrafficking Campaigns liza stuart buchbinder Thirty years after human trafficking reemerged as an international policy agenda and a decade after the Palermo Protocol defined trafficking as a crime, a surge in reports of trafficking in West Africa has given rise to an antitrafficking industry. Well into this global “war against trafficking,” the debate continues among policymakers and scholars about best practices.1 Two West African antitrafficking umbrella organizations, Réseau de Lutte contre la Traite des Enfants au Togo (RELUTET) in Togo and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP) in Nigeria, provide a lens through which we can analyze the national campaigns of these two countries to eradicate child trafficking.2 Their respective approaches reflect a constellation of local, regional, and global factors, specific to each nation, including preexisting security apparatuses, power relations with donor governments, and the individual actions of influential political figures. As an abstraction, the techniques of governance involved in antitrafficking practice contribute to a particular rendering of the state that is distinct from “the material world of society” akin to a process Timothy Mitchell describes as the “state effect.”3 In the case of antitrafficking, the implications of such an effect touches on international relations and development aid as the US Department of State (USDOS)—which spearheads the global campaign—ranks 184 countries based on their compliance with the “minimum standards” set forth in the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000. Although the category of trafficking encompasses numerous variations, this chapter draws on data specific to the campaign against child trafficking in Togo and between Togo and Nigeria. While the migration of children between these two countries lends itself to a regional approach (e.g., national 222 w Liza Stuart Buchbinder governments addressing the movement of Togolese laborers into Nigeria as an interdependent phenomenon), these two countries offer two distinct modes of intervention. In addition to information from legal documents, newsletters, and pamphlets, the present study was also based on forty-two interviews carried out in 2004 and 2009 that focused on the testimonies of representatives from antitrafficking NGOs, government agencies, and safe houses.4 The study shows that Nigeria’s antitrafficking campaign is centralized, adopting a law-enforcement approach, with mandated reporting of all NGOs to NAPTIP—a federally legislated “multidimensional crime fighting agency.”5 In contrast, Togo’s approach is centered on child development and harm reduction, with NGOs working towards prevention through long-term strategies, such as improved schooling opportunities and vocational training. RELUTET is not mandated to coordinate with the government. Instead, its mission is to promote the “development of children” by overseeing NGO efforts to fight “efficiently” against child slavery using strategies that do not aggressively pursue criminal convictions.6 These two intervention models also speak to qualities specific to what they call child trafficking as a human rights violation. In contrast to other human rights issues, such as the right to clean water or housing, child trafficking overtly encompasses both development and criminal justice. One strategy of deterrence seeks to improve the educational system and job opportunities to discourage out-migration, whereas another uses the strong arm of the law to apprehend and prosecute. The latter—a criminalizing approach—scrutinizes the legality of migration practices per international law and addresses impunity with an expanded enforcement apparatus, while also relying on statistics (which critics largely debunk as inaccurate) and sensationalized discourse to communicate the urgency of the epidemic.7 As the object of intervention in a US-led global campaign against child trafficking, these micropractices of ritual and migration link to larger processes of state making. How this is accomplished, in part, stems from the effect of modern techniques of “arrangement , representation, and control” that contribute to a strong, concrete state abstracted from civil society.8 As Mitchell argues, to truly understand the state one must abandon notions of a structured institution and look for the “powerful, metaphysical effect of practices arising from internally erected distinctions in both state and society.”9 Rather than abandon the state, as a generation of political scientists did in the 1970s, Mitchell suggests we shift our gaze toward the “techniques of organization and articulation” that create this rendering of the state.10 Drawing on Michel Foucault, Mitchell also emphasizes the importance of attending to the “side effects” of the “effect.”11 He believes that the impact of unintended consequences warrants...