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Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim

Any person who has been a victim of human trafficking has a right to compensation. Compensation entails the reimbursement of material and immaterial damages a trafficked person has suffered. In spite of the internationally recognized right to compensation, the number of trafficked persons in Europe...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cusveller, Jeltsje, Kleemans, Edward
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30111901
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269758018758427
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author Cusveller, Jeltsje
Kleemans, Edward
author_facet Cusveller, Jeltsje
Kleemans, Edward
author_sort Cusveller, Jeltsje
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description Any person who has been a victim of human trafficking has a right to compensation. Compensation entails the reimbursement of material and immaterial damages a trafficked person has suffered. In spite of the internationally recognized right to compensation, the number of trafficked persons in Europe having actually received any reimbursement is very low. The present study identifies obstacles to compensation by analysing the Dutch injured party claim. It uses 190 case files covering the period 2013–2014. The empirical results show several issues. Only an estimated 4% of all registered victims claim compensation in the criminal court. A fifth of these claims are inadmissible. Admissible claims are on average awarded only half of the claimed amount. A major reason for this is how difficult it is to estimate damages accurately. This is, in many cases, related to a lack of proof, caused by for example lack of records, insufficient financial investigation, and incomplete testimonies, which result in only minimum amounts being awarded. Additionally, judges are often inclined to dismiss the claim or award a minimum, even in those cases where evidence is available. As a result, compensation is often not in line with damages that have actually been suffered.
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spelling pubmed-60668622018-08-13 Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim Cusveller, Jeltsje Kleemans, Edward Int Rev Vict Articles Any person who has been a victim of human trafficking has a right to compensation. Compensation entails the reimbursement of material and immaterial damages a trafficked person has suffered. In spite of the internationally recognized right to compensation, the number of trafficked persons in Europe having actually received any reimbursement is very low. The present study identifies obstacles to compensation by analysing the Dutch injured party claim. It uses 190 case files covering the period 2013–2014. The empirical results show several issues. Only an estimated 4% of all registered victims claim compensation in the criminal court. A fifth of these claims are inadmissible. Admissible claims are on average awarded only half of the claimed amount. A major reason for this is how difficult it is to estimate damages accurately. This is, in many cases, related to a lack of proof, caused by for example lack of records, insufficient financial investigation, and incomplete testimonies, which result in only minimum amounts being awarded. Additionally, judges are often inclined to dismiss the claim or award a minimum, even in those cases where evidence is available. As a result, compensation is often not in line with damages that have actually been suffered. SAGE Publications 2018-04-01 2018-09 /pmc/articles/PMC6066862/ /pubmed/30111901 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269758018758427 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Cusveller, Jeltsje
Kleemans, Edward
Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim
title Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim
title_full Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim
title_fullStr Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim
title_full_unstemmed Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim
title_short Fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? A case study of the Dutch injured party claim
title_sort fair compensation for victims of human trafficking? a case study of the dutch injured party claim
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30111901
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269758018758427
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