Human trafficking issues in Southeast Asia - effective measure for ASEAN

Human trafficking remains a conundrum in Southeast Asia, despite the regional body, Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) efforts to tackle the issue. Previous research on the existing human trafficking policies enacted by ASEAN is focused on human rights perspectives and fundamental issues in human trafficking, however, lacked in addressing the challenges in the effort to combat human trafficking. This study analyses the existing human trafficking policies in Southeast Asia; analysing the challenges in the effort to counter human trafficking to determine effective measures for ASEAN countries and the regional body to overcome the challenges in eradicating human trafficking. This study argues that the existing policies' weakness, confounded by the challenges in eradicating human trafficking has significantly impacted the efficiency of the regional efforts. This study has three objectives where the first is to identify existing ASEAN’s human trafficking policies and their weakness; the second, to examine challenges by ASEAN as the regional body in countering human trafficking issues, and the third is to analyse measures for ASEAN countries to overcome the challenge of human trafficking in Southeast Asia. Conceptual framework is used to analyse the independent and intervening variables which affect the policy and ASEAN’s effort in eradicating human trafficking. Qualitative method is used where detailed observation and analysis of data are conducted over the collected data from secondary sources such as reliable printed and online sources. The findings of this study indicated that human trafficking keeps on occurring in the region due to the failure to address the ‘push and pull’ factor, lack of understanding of the victim’s agency and corruption. Furthermore, the issues are compounded by the non¬ interference principle and the lack of knowledge among the law enforcement agencies. Inherently, this research recommends that the non-intervention principle be relaxed to allow effective policy implementation, the establishment of a regional committee and improvement of the education and knowledge among the law enforcement agencies and services.