Tracing Organs, Tracing Responsibility: The Indonesia–Cambodia Case and the Accountability Gap in Trafficking for Organ Removal

Abstract

This Letter responds to Gawronska’s (2023) analysis of illicit organ removal by extending the discussion from legal frameworks to institutional accountability. Using the Indonesia–Cambodia case as a contemporary illustration, it introduces responsibility traceability as an analytical lens for examining whether institutional responsibility can be reconstructed across trafficking trajectories involving multiple agencies and jurisdictions. While transplantation governance emphasizes tracing organs, donors, and recipients, anti-trafficking governance also requires attention to which institutions encountered potential victims, what information was available, who had authority to intervene, and where opportunities for protection became disconnected. The Letter argues that an accountability gap may persist even where individual institutions have defined responsibilities when those responsibilities cannot be connected across the trafficking trajectory.