Human trafficking
Victim identification and protection in the UK

In the UK, human trafficking cases are processed by the same officials to simultaneously determine the refugee and trafficking victim statuses of a person. However, criteria for qualifying as a refugee and a trafficking victim differ and they have different needs for staying in a country. A person may need assistance as a trafficking victim but their circumstances may not necessarily meet the threshold for asylum. In this case, not being granted refugee status affects their status as a trafficked victim and thus their ability to receive help. Reviews of the statistics from the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a tool created by the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (CoE Convention) to help states effectively identify and care for trafficking victims, found that positive decisions for non-European Union citizens were much lower than that of EU and UK citizens. According to data on the NRM decisions from April 2009 to April 2011, an average of 82.8% of UK and EU citizens were conclusively accepted as victims while an average of only 45.9% of non-EU citizens were granted the same status. High refusal rates of non-EU people point to possible stereotypes and biases about regions and countries of origin which may hinder anti-trafficking efforts, since the asylum system is linked to the trafficking victim protection system.

Laura Agustin has suggested that, in some cases, "anti-traffickers" ascribe victim status to immigrants who have made conscious and rational decisions to cross the borders knowing they will be selling sex and who do not consider themselves to be victims. There have been instances in which the alleged victims of trafficking have actually refused to be rescued or run away from the anti-trafficking shelters.

In a 2013 lawsuit, the Court of Appeal gave guidance to prosecuting authorities on the prosecution of victims of human trafficking, and held that the convictions of three Vietnamese children and one Ugandan woman ought to be quashed as the proceedings amounted to an abuse of the court's process. The case was reported by the BBC and one of the victims was interviewed by Channel 4.

In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the British government to compensate two victims of child trafficking for their later arrest and conviction of drug crimes.
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