A/HRC/38/45 using similar means of travel, and for various and often interrelated reasons. 1 People do not necessarily enter mixed migration movements as trafficked persons, but might become trafficked during their journey or when they reach a transit or destination country. Their migration might have started out independently or using the services of a smuggler, but then turned into trafficking at a later stage. 8. Challenges related to the identification and protection of victims of trafficking in persons in the current migration context have not been adequately addressed either at the national, regional or international levels, where Member States are currently negotiating a global compact on refugees and a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. Specifically, the so-called migration “crisis” in Europe and elsewhere has exposed serious protection gaps, and State responses demonstrate that the protection of victims or potential victims of trafficking in persons is not often prioritized when countries face irregular migration movements, and is geared towards responding to the needs of the victims of particular categories (mostly the sexual exploitation of women and children). 9. Early identification is being defined as comprising both proactive informal processes as well as a formal process of screening persons to detect indications of trafficking in persons, or of vulnerabilities to trafficking and/or exploitation. Early identification should not be regarded as a one-step process. Experience from the field has shown that victims often do not come forward at first contact with assistance providers, much less at first contact with law enforcement authorities, especially when they have suffered severe forms of exploitation. Identification is possible when a safe space and a relationship of trust have been created to allow victims to share a traumatizing experience. It is therefore difficult to successfully identify victims of trafficking at arrival areas — such as disembarkation points of search and rescue operations, hotspots or airports — as well as in transit countries, due to little awareness of the indicators of trafficking in persons and of victims’ needs among first responders, and an unwillingness from the potential victims themselves to be identified and registered in a country that is not their intended country of destination. IV. International and policy framework 10. Under the Palermo Protocol, States are required to prevent trafficking, to investigate and prosecute traffickers and to assist and protect trafficked persons with full respect for their human rights. A failure to identify a trafficked person correctly is likely to result in a further denial of that person’s rights. In the Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2 States are therefore called upon to ensure that such identification does take place. Similar obligations on the need to establish identification guidelines and procedures are also enshrined in regional conventions. 3 11. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography prohibit trafficking in children for any purpose. They call upon States to develop and adopt proactive identification measures for the rapid identification of trafficked children and to establish the presumption that, pending verification of their age, children should be treated as such. 12. In addition, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol provide for specific protection guarantees for asylum seekers and refugees, which may include victims and potential victims of trafficking by prohibiting, inter alia, their return or expulsion to the territories where their lives or freedom would be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership to a particular social group.4 Moreover, the obligation of States to identify and protect victims of forced 1 2 3 4 4 See A/HRC/29/38, para. 11. Available at www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/Traffickingen.pdf. ASEAN Convention against Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children and the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. See Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Guidelines on International Protection No. 7 (2006), available at