New Zealand
Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian(SOCHUM): Human Trafficking
It is one of the greatest pities of the modern world that human beings continued to be trafficked between countries across the globe, creating a global slave market. The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking has made much progress in aiding law enforcement to fight human trafficking and providing organizational support to other institutions. Recent resolutions from the Security Council such as Resolution 2388 in 2017 and Resolution 2331 in 2017 reaffirm the UN’s committment to opposing widespread human trafficking across the globe. The fight against human trafficking is concordant with the basic principles outlined in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly articles 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, and 13. Moreover, because human trafficking both reflects and creates poverty, exploitation, and discrimination, it is necessary that member nations work to ameliorate the issues of human trafficking within their nations.
New Zealand has made incredible progress on the issue of human trafficking. Because of the isolated nature of being an island nation, New Zealand has been able to implement strict regulations upon entrance to the country to ensure that traffickers are unable to enter the country. The United States Department of State has consistently ranked New Zealand a Tier 1 nation in terms of its human trafficking issues, indicating that New Zealand has been able to keep human trafficking issues to a minimum. Despite the high achievements, there have been some persistent concerns about the cooperation between governmental departments in fighting particular instances of sex trafficking, which is something the New Zealand government has been adamant to work on. New Zealand’s policies of decriminalized sex work have allowed the government to work more closely with communities of sex workers and migrants, allowing the identification of trafficking victims in a timely manner.
New Zealand’s goals are to urge all remaining countries to sign the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and to emphasize that member nations should update/revise their laws to ensure that new methods of trafficking can be combatted. Additionally, New Zealand hopes that member states can allocate additional funding for the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking in order to rebolster its vital programs. Finally, New Zealand wishes that member states could focus on addressing the structural causes of human trafficking such as poverty, regional instability, failed states, and global disparities in economic opportunities, which have broader impacts and prevent a true reduction in human trafficking unless ameliorated.
- Eli Logan
