He made the disclosure in his opening remarks at the two-day Cross Border Counter Trafficking Indonesia-Malaysia 08/09 Awareness Workshop on Tuesday themed, "Human Trafficking" organised by ICMC Jakarta, Archdiocesan Human Development Committee (AHDC) KK, and Tenaganita.

Trafficking in persons is not a modern day phenomenon, he said, pointing out that trafficking was officially addressed as early as in 1885, at the first international conference on the prevention of trafficking in women in Paris.

Human trafficking is defined as the recruitment of a person, by deceit or coercion and moved from one place to another with the express purpose of being put into forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation. Those responsible for the person's recruitment, transportation and employment are traffickers.

Dasgupta emphasised that trafficking must be distinguished from smuggling of migrants, which is international procurement for profit for illegal entry and illegal residence of a person in a state of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident. While trafficking may include a complex organisation of contracts, smuggling refers solely to unlawful border-crossing services.

"Having said that it is also important to mention that the definition of trafficking had been an evolving one. During the last 125 years, trafficking has been defined differently by different stakeholders. However, essentially all definitions agree that an act of trafficking comprises (a) Procuring a person (b) Moving the person from the place of recruitment to another location, and (c) Putting the person in a situation of forced labour or prostitution.

"In the early 1900s, treaties on trafficking focused exclusively upon the process of (forced) recruitment and transport of women. The 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others combined 'trafficking as procurement' with 'prostitution as exploitation' (defined particularly by financial management or rental of premises for the purpose of prostitution)."

According to him, the first treaties were limited to compulsive forms of procurement. Although individual nation-states were allowed to punish non-compulsive forms of procurement, international accord obliged punishment only in cases of 'fraud on the use of violence, threats, abuse of authority, or any other means of restraintÉ'

"In 1933, the condition of restraint was removed rendering procurement punishable 'even with the consent of the victim'.

"Prior to signing of the Palermo Protocol, some of the later definitions equated trafficking in persons with the smuggling of aliens (also called alien trafficking or trafficking in migrants). In this event, illegal entry or residence became the crime.

"With the growth of women's movements across the globe, a point of view emerged that in extreme situations women could choose prostitution as a survival option. A debate emerged once again whether procurement (for the purpose of prostitution) with the consent of the subject could still be categorised as trafficking."

He said during the last 25 years, attention had been drawn to multiple manifestations of trafficking.

"This shift is reflected in more recent definitions that include trafficking not only for the purpose of prostitution but also for the purpose of domestic labour, marriage and other work or services.

Extensive consultations and debates of the late 1990s on the issue of human trafficking, and the prevalent understanding of that time with respect to the connection between human trafficking and international crime eventually led to the drafting and signing in December 2000 by almost 80 countries, of the Palermo Protocol.

The "Protocol to Suppress, Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children", expanded the earlier UN General Assembly definition of trafficking in women and children in the following ways:

"Firstly, it defined 'movement' in much greater detail. Movement, in the context of trafficking, now comprises any one or more of recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring and receipt.

"Secondly, the definition stated with greater clarity than before, the means that can be adopted by the traffickers to induce movement of the trafficked person. Those are of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability, or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another.

"Thirdly, it defined a broader range of sites to which trafficking can lead and finally, it defined a child to be one under 18 years of age."

Malaysia passed an anti-trafficking law in 2007, which became effective on Feb 28, 2008. Incidentally, the enactment of the law was based on an earlier recommendation by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) that the government adopt a National Plan of Action (NPA) against trafficking.