This year’s Trafficking in Persons Report offers a roadmap for the road ahead as we confront the scourge of trafficking. Whether a concerned citizen, a board member, a government official, or a survivor of trafficking, we each have a responsibility to spot human trafficking, engage our communities, and commit to take action.
This year, the TIP Report introduction highlights human trafficking that takes place exclusively within the borders of one country, absent any transnational elements. Although acknowledging human trafficking in this form is not new or novel, it remains important. The ILO reports that, globally, traffickers exploit 77 percent of victims in their countries of residence. Far too often, individuals, organizations, and governments erroneously use definitions of trafficking in persons that require the movement of victims.
This scoping research explores ‘worker-driven social responsibility’ (WSR) as a tool for ensuring decent work in supply chains. WSR is an exciting new model for tackling labour abuse in supply chains that has demonstrably improved working conditions in a range of contexts. It is similar to collective bargaining in that it involves a group of workers jointly negotiating their rights, with the difference that it targets companies at the top of supply chains instead of direct employers. The report discusses why new models for addressing labour abuse in supply chains are needed and whether the WSR model could be suitable to the UK, especially to sectors where outsourcing is common.
This briefing examines the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the risk of labour exploitation in low-paid and insecure employment in the UK. Drawing on interviews with workers and frontline services, it proposes emergency measures to ensure all workers are protected against financial destitution and exploitation while the UK works to contain the virus and its impact.
The COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging lives and livelihoods around the world – causing unprecedented socio-economic crises, massive displacement arising due to job losses, and at the same time, exposing the vulnerabilities of a highly globalised economy. As of April 9th, India has reported 5734 cases of COVID-19 while Indonesia has recorded 2956 cases, Sri Lanka 189 cases, and Cambodia 118 cases.
In August, 2019, Stop the Traffik Kenya (STTK) and Freedom Collaborative (FC), a project operated by Liberty Shared, launched a data collection effort with civil society organisations (CSOs) in Kenya to report known human trafficking and high-risk migration routes based on their work with survivors and at-risk populations. Data was gathered from partners over the course of one month to demonstrate how much knowledge can be made available when each organisation is sharing their individual data.
The size and scope of the global forced migration crisis are unprecedented. Almost 66 million people worldwide have been forced from home by conflict. If recent trends continue, this figure could increase to between 180 and 320 million people by 2030. This global crisis already poses serious challenges to economic growth and risks to stability and national security, as well as an enormous human toll affecting tens of millions of people. These issues are on track to get worse; without significant course correction soon, the forced migra- tion issues confronted today will seem sim- ple decades from now.
Probably nowhere more than in Libya have the definitional lines between migrant smuggling and human trafficking become as blurred or contested. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have left Libya’s shores in the hope of a new life in Europe; tens of thousands have died in the process. The inhumane conditions migrants face in Libya are well documented. The levels of brutality and exploitation they experience in Libya’s turbulent transitional environment have led to smuggling and trafficking groups being bundled under one catch-all heading by authorities and policymakers, and targeted as the root cause of the migration phenomenon. In many respects, this would appear to conveniently serve the interests of EU leaders and governments, who choose to disguise the anti-migration drive they urgently seek support for behind a policy of cracking down on both trafficking and smuggling rings, which they conflate as a common enemy, and one and the same. Given the highly complex context of Libya, this report proposes instead that any intervention to address the so-called migrant crisis should place the human rights of migrants at its centre, as opposed to necessarily demonizing smugglers, who are often the migrants’ gatekeepers to a better existence elsewhere.
Discussions about human trafficking data sometimes seem surprisingly abstract, as if research is most centrally about counting things from some distance: approximating “head counts” of global prevalence, formulating statistics, calculating metrics or constructing maps to illustrate geographic “hot-spots”, “routes” or “hubs”. All of these exercises, done well, can play a role in contributing to our understanding of human trafficking. But, even at their best, they are only a partial path to improved understanding and, moreover, sometimes seem to obscure the fact that human trafficking is, first and foremost, about human beings.
This document discusses experiences in developing and implementing a trafficking prevention project in a town in Albania, inspired by and drawing on a particular approach to behavioural and social change called “positive deviance” (PD). It is intended as a resource for practitioners working in the field of trafficking prevention and it is hoped that it can be useful for others who are considering implementing a similar approach or methodology.
Combatting trafficking in persons (TIP) requires evidence-based knowledge – to effectively target prevention efforts, design appropriate protection interventions or pursue effective prosecutions. This requires methodologically rigorous, reliable and ethical data collection as well as objective and insightful analysis and use of that data. It also requires guarding against weak or faulty data, which has the potential to cause disproportionate harm, including to trafficking victims, when used to design or support ill-conceived and ungrounded public policy and programmatic interventions on TIP.
This publication is part of a series of studies produced in the context of the NEXUS Institute’s research project entitled Good Practice in Global Data Collection on Trafficking in Persons: The Science (and Art) of Understanding TIP. The objective in this research series is to address the identification and elaboration of good practice in ways that will help guide organizations, institutions, researchers and others to strengthen their data collection and accelerate the collective acquisition of important knowledge about human trafficking.
Research suggests connections exist between migration and criminal forms of exploitation such as human trafficking, forced labour and modern slavery. Certainly, constellations of risk are seen in certain migrant communities and migration corridors. However, it is not known how many of the world’s estimated 40 million victims of modern slavery are also migrants.
The primary aim of the study was to provide baseline estimates of prevalence of forced labour among children (aged 10 – 17 years) and adults (aged 18 and over) working in the cocoa sector in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, as well as updated estimates of the number of children (aged 10 to 17 years) exposed to child labour.
While previous qualitative research has exposed select forms of modern slavery in the Pacific, this report provides a comprehensive assessment of modern slavery in the region. The report draws on existing peer-reviewed and grey literature, Walk Free’s 2019 assessment of action taken by governments to address modern slavery, as well as information gathered through semi-structured interviews with anti-slavery stakeholders in eight countries in the region: Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu.
The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority1 citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen. This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps.
Fifteen years ago, in October 2003, Congress passed a law allowing trafficking victims to recover civil damages for trafficking in federal courts. Trafficking survivors have brought a total of 299 cases under this provision, demanding justice from an array of defendants. This report analyzes a decade and a half of labor and sex trafficking civil litigation in federal courts. What are the trends, challenges, and innovations.? This report provides quantitative and qualitative assessments of the past 15 years of civil litigation under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003. It tracks the statute’s geographical reach, types of cases, victims’ countries of origin, methods of entry into the United States, case outcomes, and damages awards. Finally, the report identifies challenges that trafficking survivors continue to face as they fight to hold their traffickers accountable.
This toolkit builds upon the foundational guidance already published, focusing on CEDAW’s Optional Protocol and the potential for human trafficking individual complaints. The toolkit provides an overview of CEDAW and the Optional Protocol; a snapshot of the CEDAW Committee’s jurisprudence on human trafficking; and maps out strategies to use this mechanism to protect the rights of trafficked women and girls.
The time has come to build an international network of lawyers and advocates who have the tools they need to bring the right cases to the right courts. In May 2015, the Freedom Fund and the Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center brought together leading human rights lawyers, advocates, and litigators from around the world for a meeting in London. The conversation centered on how best to bring strategic litigation against states and private actors in order to combat trafficking and modern-day slavery. This document shares many of the key issues discussed at the meeting, including important lessons learned from successful litigation. It also highlights a number of persistent gaps that must be bridged in order to identify, prepare, and successfully prosecute cases that can lead to systemic change.
Construction is a bipolar industry. On the public side, we create inspirational buildings, pushing the boundaries of architecture and technology; solving ever more difficult challenges. The dark side – the systematic exploitation of millions of vulnerable migrants – is rarely acknowledged, even by the clients and multinationals that commission and create our shiny new cities. Our sector is rife with human rights abuses. Bonded labour, delayed wages, abysmal working and living conditions, withholding of passports and limitations of movement are all forms of modern slavery.
Stamping Out Exploitation in Travel is a benchmarking report that presents key findings and themes from a study of 70 companies in the travel industry on their initiatives to fight human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The report establishes a way to measure progress, identifies the baseline for their engagement, and highlights best practices to encourage cross-learning within the travel industry.
In an effort to strategically inform technology initiatives for combating domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST), Thorn partnered with Dr. Vanessa Bouché at Texas Christian University to survey survivors about their experiences. The survey focused on understanding what role technology played in a victim’s recruitment into, time while in, and exit from DMST.
This report surveys the portfolio of legal work being carried out by the Freedom Fund’s NGO partners across seven modern slavery hotspots. Frontline legal interventions are classified into four key categories that respond to the issues that these organisations are trying to address – strengthening laws and regulations, supporting effective enforcement, building rights awareness and facilitating access to justice. The report focuses on the solutions that frontline NGOs have found, drawing out lessons from these interventions that are relevant to the wider anti-slavery community.
Improving the practices involved in the recruitment of international migrant workers is a priority for companies, governments, and non-governmental organisations seeking to address forced labour risks. However, to date, there has been little publicly accessible information covering the challenges and achievements of real-world attempts to make responsible recruitment a reality. Global seafood producer Thai Union (TU) began implementing its Ethical Migrant Recruitment Policy (the Policy) in 2016. In order to understand the successes and challenges of TU’s efforts, Humanity United and the Freedom Fund commissioned Impactt to conduct an independent, six-month evaluation in 2018.
This Oxfam briefing note presents compelling new evidence that our food supply chains are rife with violations of human, labour and women’s rights. The paper summarizes new research commissioned by Oxfam, which shows the depth and scale of human suffering in food production in India and Brazil among workers linked to international supermarket supply chains. The briefing note identifies company laggards on workers’ rights, makes clear that progress is possible and where it is being made, and puts forward a framework for action with important steps for supermarkets to take to end human suffering in their supply chains.