This article has sought to highlight a problem: that trafficked women, having already suffered serious breaches of their fundamental human rights by being forced into the sex trade in a foreign country, may sometimes find themselves victim yet again - this time at the hands of their own State, owing to its deliberate failure, or inability, to offer assistance and protection in the foreign country. The effect may be to render them stateless. Perhaps the most invidious aspect of this problem is its de facto nature. Where someone is formally stateless, she may at least be able to secure assistance because of her predicament, which is more easily recognisable. She is at least acknowledged to be stateless. Where someone has a formal nationality but in reality lacks protection from that State, she may well have a very onerous burden in establishing this and, even if she does, the destination State may be unsympathetic because it may be easier to insist on the continuing validity of the formal nationality. Not all trafficked women will be stateless. Some will have identity or travel documents that enable them to return home or assist them to regularise their status in the destination State. Others will be able to acquire them, with more or less difficulty. As for those left over, the challenge to the international community is to ensure that they are not abandoned to their fates; the challenge to international lawyers is to identify the legal bases that oblige, and enable, the international community to achieve this.

[No Keywords available]

national identity forced migration human rights gender issue