Fighting Human Trafficking or Instituting Authoritarian Control?

This chapter considers the uses of the anti-trafficking agenda of the authoritarian government of Belarus. It identifies the ways the Belarus government uses anti-trafficking as a basis for other self-sufficient and nationalist agendas, and by making travel abroad by students and young people more difficult. It notes that the trafficking indicators of the State Department ignore other forms of human rights repression or the excesses of policing systems in Belarus. This chapter also emphasizes the relevant theme of the importance of global indicators in authoritarian contexts, an area that also lacks research.