JCU Welcomes Former UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons Maria Grazia Giammarinaro
The JCU Department of Political Science and International Affairs welcomed Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, former United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, for an event titled “The Concept of Exploitation Under International Law” on March 14th. The event was moderated by JCU Professor Silvia Scarpa and was held in the context of her PL/LAW 325 Human Trafficking and Contemporary Slavery course.
Giammarinaro’s talk was divided into three main parts. First, she presented the idea of exploitation by referring to international treaties that belong to multiple branches of international law. None of them contains a description of the concept of exploitation so its contours remain undefined. Second, she situated the concept in relation to others, such as slavery and forced labor, and considered the issue from a comparative perspective by looking at some national laws that incorporate it, including the ones of Canada, Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Finally, she examined the tensions existing in the interpretation of the concept of exploitation, which belongs to both areas of transnational criminal law and international human rights law. Thus, there’s a need to maintain, on one hand, clear limits to the concept and to avoid its instrumentalization as well as, on the other, to avoid its erosion.
Maria Grazia Giammarinaro has served as a Pre-Trial Judge at the Criminal Court of Rome and as a Judge in the Civil Court of Rome. From 2010 to 2014 she served as Special Representative and Coordinator of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on combatting trafficking in human beings and in 2014 she was appointed United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children. In February 2019, she was appointed Adjunct Professor of Human Rights Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway. She holds a degree in Italian literature and in Law and worked for several years as a High School teacher before joining the Italian judiciary system.
