have taken a comprehensive approach to granting subsidiary protection, but a narrow one on questions of refugee status.170 The OSCE Action Plan recommends that states ensure that their anti-trafficking laws, policies, programmes and interventions do not affect the right of all persons, including victims of trafficking, to seek and enjoy asylum, in particular by ensuring the effective application of the principle of non-refoulement.171 This recommendation is also provided for in the UN Trafficking Protocol,172 the Council of Europe Trafficking Convention173 and the EU Trafficking Directive.174 Moreover, the risk of reprisals or retaliation by traffickers may constitute persecution in the meaning of the word applied in the UN Refugee Convention. In this vein, the Commentary to the Council of Europe Trafficking Convention reaffirms that the “fact of being a victim of trafficking in human beings cannot preclude the right to seek and enjoy asylum and Parties shall ensure that victims of trafficking have access to appropriate and fair asylum procedures”.175 The deportation of groups of trafficked persons without conducting individual assessments of the situation of each person and the individual risks he or she faces can, in addition to compromising the right to seek and receive asylum from persecution, also violate the prohibition of refoulement as discussed above, as well as the prohibition on collective expulsions.176 As set out in the UN Refugee Convention, asylum claims are to be considered on their substantive merits and not on the basis of the applicant’s means of entry.177 In order to be recognized as a refugee, the individual concerned must be found to have a “well-founded fear of persecution” that is linked to one or more of the grounds included in the UN Refugee Convention.178 The UNHCR Trafficking Guidelines 170  Ibid. However, under EU Qualification Directive art. 6(c), non-state actors are considered actors of persecution or serious harm if it can be demonstrated that the state or parties or organizations controlling the state or a substantial part of the territory of the state, including international organizations, are unable or unwilling to provide protection against persecution or serious harm as defined in article 7 of the Directive. 171  See OSCE Action Plan, part V, para. 9(1). 172  UN Trafficking Protocol, art. 14. 173  Council of Europe Trafficking Convention, art. 40. 174  EU Trafficking Directive, recital 10. 175  Explanatory Report to the Council of Europe Trafficking Convention, para. 377. 176  See ECHR, protocol 4, art. 4; and UN General Assembly (UNGA), International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, 18 December 1990, A/RES/45/158, art. 22(1). See also European Union: Council of the European Union, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2007/C 303/01), 14 December 2007, C 303/1, art. 19, on protection in the event of removal, expulsion or extradition, which prohibits collective expulsions. For more information on the distinction between refoulement and collective expulsions, see UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), OHCHR intervention before the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Hirsi et al. v. Italy, 5 May 2011, Application No. 27765/09. 177  See UN Refugee Convention, art. 31. See also Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, “Article 31 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees: Non-penalization, detention, and protection”, in Erika Feller, Volker Türk and Frances Nicholson (eds.), Refugee Protection in International Law: UNHCR’s Global Consultations on International Protection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 185-188. See also, for example, Tyler Marie Christensen, Trafficking for sexual exploitation: victim protection in international and domestic asylum law, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Research Paper No. 206, April 2011. 178  These grounds can be found in the UN Refugee Convention, art. 1A(2). 62 Part 2: Explanatory Report to the Principles