Legislative Policy Trends in Combating Trafficking in Persons:  A Critical Analytical Study of Kuwaiti and Emirati Laws

Dr. Mohamad Nour Al Din Sayed
Associate Professor of Criminal Law
College of Law – University of Sharjah – UAE

Abstract:

The crimes of trafficking in persons are one of the most serious crimes that infringe upon the rights and freedoms of victims, especially the right to human dignity, and are therefore considered crimes against humanity. The international community has given great importance to the development of international conventions and protocols to combat such crimes. Many countries, including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have paid great attention to the enactment of laws to combat trafficking in persons, in any form, and have decided to impose severe penalties on the perpetrators.
The policy of the criminal legislator differed in the statement of the legal structure of the crimes of trafficking in persons, both in terms of definition and elements of the crime, and its policy differed in the provisions of the punishment for such crime. The researcher aims to identify the trends of the legislative policy of the Kuwaiti and the Emirati legislator in combating trafficking in persons, and to show the strengths and weaknesses in each other’s policy. In his study, the researcher followed the analytical descriptive method of legal texts.
The study concluded with a number of findings and recommendations, including: the Emirati legislator added forms of buying and selling or promise to them, recruiting and using, while the Kuwaiti legislator did not mention any of those forms. The two countries under study punished trafficking in persons with a punishment of deprivation of liberty in addition to the ordinary penalty fine, as an additional punishment, for the natural person, and with the fine and confiscation of the legal person, with the exception of these crimes from the scope of applying the reduced judicial circumstances and staying the execution, and in return decided to exempt the perpetrators when reporting the crime. The researcher recommended that the laws of trafficking in persons under study should be amended in the light of previous results.
Keywords: legal structure, definition, elements, provisions of punishment, tightening, exemption from punishment.

Read Full PDF Text (Arabic)