Analysing human trafficking court cases in Sweden

Yesterday, the CBSS Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings organized a Webinar in which Associate Professor at Örebro Universitet, Märta Johansson, presented the findings of the report “Human Trafficking for forced labour and labour exploitation in the Swedish labour market: An overview of Swedish court cases”. The report provides an overview of existing court cases concerning Human Trafficking for forced labour and labour exploitation in Sweden and how international law and Swedish law are interpreted in courts. The webinar was held in Swedish and was attended by approximately 30 Swedish stakeholders, such as the Migration Agency, Prosecution Authority, Police and Social services.

The report is one of several activities within the frame of the project “Competence building, Assistance provision and Prosecution of labour exploitation cases in the Baltic Sea Region” (CAPE). 

During the webinar Märta Johansson in detail described prosecuted cases of THB in Sweden between 2004-2020 which reached criminal proceedings and concluded that there have been few convictions regarding Human Trafficking for Forced Labour since the introduction of the Human Trafficking legislation. The majority of the cases concerned forced begging and only four prosecuted cases concerned forced labour in labour sectors such as the restaurant, hotel or construction business. One explanation was that the definition of Forced labour does not follow international standards but is interpreted irregularly. As an example, in a forced labour case which in fact ended up in conviction, the court did not thoroughly elaborate on why the specific case constituted as Human Trafficking. Moreover, the overall competence and knowledge in identifying forced labour needs to be improved among all authorities working in the field.