Over the last decade, I have interviewed scores of trafficking victims: people enslaved and forced to work under horrific conditions in sweatshops, brothels, and even other people’s homes. The images of the men, women, and children I interviewed still haunt my thoughts.

Champa A., a Nepali girl I interviewed in Kathmandu, told me, “I went there when I was fifteen. All of us trafficked girls, thirty to forty of us, were kept in one room. We were only given two meals per day. … We were locked in, and we weren’t allowed to leave. A few girls ran away. But they were caught, when they were brought back they were beaten up, and had hot water poured over them. When we got ill, it was only when I was completely bedridden that I got taken to the doctor. We were treated like animals. … I stayed there for two years in total. My family didn’t know I was there.”

Champa’s experience is horrifying. Yet she was not telling me here about the terrible treatment she experienced when forced to work in a brothel in India, which she had earlier told me about. She was describing the treatment she received in a private shelter in Nepal, after she was “rescued” by police and sent for “rehabilitation.”

While there can be no equating the scope and immense suffering imposed by traffickers and the abuses that can accompany anti-trafficking responses, mistreatment of women and girls following rescue from trafficking is also a serious concern. The latter includes not only coercive and at times abusive confinement of trafficking victims after their rescue, as experienced by Champa, but also abuses by corrupt officials and approaches to rescue that can end up feeding a vicious circle of trafficking, the same women and girls cycling in and out of trafficking situations. While there is fortunately growing awareness of the importance of tackling such “post-trafficking” abuses, there is still a long way to go to fully incorporate concern with victim’s rights at all stages of the response to trafficking.

The Imperative of Anti-Trafficking

Under international law, trafficking is the movement of people, through deceptive and coercive means, into a situation of slavery, forced labor, or severe exploitation.