ABSTRACT
In this essay, we explore some of the perverse effects on rights of the adoption of the Palermo Protocol. We focus on the development of State obligations to identify trafficked persons, a set of State surveillance practices that we argue accidentally produces a ‘rights-like’ formation out of this State duty. However, we see that what is produced is a strange specie of right, which we call the ‘right to be found’. We are particularly concerned that this claim is alleged to be in service of fulfilling the promises of the Palermo Protocol, but almost no other State duties to human well-being have materialised as enforceable claims within the anti-trafficking regime. We call it a ‘right’, while keeping the term in quotation marks as a perverse and yet poignant reminder to those of us working within the rights regime of how few actual rights are materialising out of our anti-trafficking work.
