The new brazilian anti-trafficking law: Challenges and opportunities to cover the normative lack

Abstract

This study is based on the assumption that Brazilian counter-trafficking in persons law enforcement has given rise to a complex, deficient, confusing anti-trafficking system that presents legal obstacles. Derived from this lack of harmonization in the Brazilian context, there were different ways of interpreting what trafficking was, which has also generated a confusing framework regarding the interpretation of the concept itself. Hence, the new anti-trafficking law in Brazil (13.344/2016) was approved in order to cover this normative vacuum and to act as a useful and proactive instrument in tackling human trafficking in Brazil that would comply with the due diligence. The purpose of the article is to analyse whether the irrelevance of consent to crimes of trafficking in persons in the new anti-trafficking law in Brazil complies with the requirements of international law on the matter. For these purposes, we apply a descriptive qualitative methodology, consisting of the review and analysis of the legal regulations, jurisprudence, doctrine and legal bibliography. The procedure to access the information from secondary sources has been carried out through the following search engines and bibliographic databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. In turn, the various Brazilian and United Nations repositories, databases and specialized studies on the subject were used. The conclusions of this study contribute to the area in that they show that, to comply with the due diligence, it is necessary to meet the requirement of the international standard on the irrelevance of consent. Thus, favouring a multidirectional action that safeguards the human rights of victims-survivors.