HUMAN TRAFFICKING WATCH · DISPATCH
From Courts to Archives, Confronting Trafficking
EU prosecutors align practice as Cornell historian’s study earns maritime history honors.
At Eurojust, specialised prosecutors tightened cross-border practice under a revised EU directive, while in Ithaca a historian’s award-winning study revisited a century of captive-taking in the Caribbean, placing present efforts against a longer record of coercion.
On 17–18 June 2026, specialised prosecutors on trafficking in human beings convened at Eurojust headquarters in The Hague for the fifth meeting of their Focus Group, co‑chaired by EU Anti‑Trafficking Coordinator Diane Schmitt, to address the operational demands of cross‑border casework under evolving law. With Member States preparing the practical application of the revised EU Anti‑Trafficking Directive, the forum concentrated on how judicial actors would align procedures, interpret obligations, and organise assistance across jurisdictions where victims and suspects often traverse borders. The format, set at the agency that supports judicial cooperation, invited frank exchanges on gaps that surface once legislation leaves the page and becomes caseload, deadlines, and mutual legal assistance. Holding the session at Eurojust underscored the centrality of coordinated casework in dismantling networks that profit from movement and coercion, and the need for decision‑makers to hear directly from those shaping indictments. It was a workmanlike agenda rather than a ceremonial one, intended to refine the tools practitioners actually use when trafficking allegations cross borders or institutions. The emphasis, throughout, was on practice that withstands scrutiny while centering those harmed. (Migration and Home Affairs, n.d.)
Prosecutors examined the non‑prosecution principle, pressing into the practical questions that arise when victims are compelled into unlawful acts and must be shielded from charges that would otherwise follow them through courts. They also worked through a new operational action on judicial cooperation under EMPACT Trafficking in Human Beings, aiming to standardise touchpoints that often fracture investigations when languages, legal systems, and evidentiary thresholds differ. Child trafficking, particularly in the context of institutional care, sat on the table alongside awareness‑raising efforts, a pairing that highlights how detection and prevention must proceed in tandem when the setting itself conveys authority and routine. Cooperation with Latin American countries received specific attention, a signal that routes and recruiters do not respect continental boundaries and that witness protection and evidence handling must, therefore, be negotiated with partners beyond the Union. Participants also consulted on the new EU Strategy on Combatting Trafficking in Human Beings, weighing how strategic guidance translates into charging decisions, resource allocation, and durable protection for families whose cases can unfold over years. (Migration and Home Affairs, n.d.)
Around the table were specialised prosecutors and judicial practitioners; representatives from the European Commission, Europol, and national authorities; counterparts from Western Balkan partners and Latin American countries; the EL PACCTO 2.0 project; the OSCE; and Eurojust’s National Members and Liaison Prosecutors. Schmitt said the meeting demonstrated the commitment of prosecutors across the Union to strengthen cooperation, a necessary condition for building cases that stand under scrutiny and that protect the people they are designed to serve. As Member States ready the revised directive’s application, exchanges among peers were described as valuable for identifying obstacles early, standardising good practice, and sharing experience that can otherwise remain siloed within one jurisdiction. The picture that emerged was of a community calibrating doctrine against the realities of compelled labour and exploitation, using the discipline of joint work to limit impunity rather than to produce communiqués. The result, if sustained, is a thicker fabric of judicial collaboration at exactly the points where traffickers have long relied on fragmentation. (Migration and Home Affairs, n.d.)
In a different register of the same fight, Casey Schmitt, an assistant professor of history in Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences, received the North American Society for Oceanic History’s 2025 John R. Lyman Book Award in World Maritime History. The Predatory Sea, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025, was recognised for advancing a field that links maritime economies with the coercive systems that grew around them, and was presented as the first full‑length study of captivity’s entanglement with colonialism in this context. The award, bearing John R. Lyman’s name, connects scholarly excavation with a community of historians who have treated the world’s oceans as sites of commerce, conflict, and—too often—forced movement. Cornell’s announcement situated the honour squarely within that tradition while pointing to how archival labour can unsettle received narratives about how trafficking and captivity structured power on and around the sea. For a historian whose work tracks people rather than just vessels, the recognition marked a moment when method met memory and was judged by peers to matter. (Cornell Chronicle, n.d.)
Schmitt’s study traces the period 1570 to 1670 in the Caribbean, examining how early modern racialised slavery emerged through practices of captive‑taking and human trafficking that fed settlement and labour across the region. The Cornell report framed the project’s contribution in its close historical focus, bringing together episodes and systems that made people into commodities in a century that reordered Atlantic worlds. In accepting the recognition, Schmitt called the honour from the North American Society for Oceanic History tremendously exciting, a plain phrasing that underscored the book’s reception within a specialised field. The work’s temporal and geographic specificity, as described by the university, offers a concentrated view of how coercion moved with ships and settlers across waters that linked islands, ports, and plantations. Placed alongside the day‑to‑day labour of prosecutors, the contour is clear: understanding how systems are built is part of how they are taken apart. (Cornell Chronicle, n.d.)
Locations: Eurojust headquarters, The Swan pub (Braintree), Arab countries, Latin America, Caribbean
Tags: policy, research, international