A report on promising practices highlights survivor empowerment and community collaboration
The U.S. TIP Office explores impactful approaches to anti-trafficking work, families seeking asylum in the UK live in conditions which breach their human rights, and Venezuelan migrants face trafficking risks due to a lack of livelihood opportunities.
The Senior Policy Operating Group of the U.S. Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has highlighted survivor empowerment efforts, diversity of support services, and collaboration with a broad range of communities and organizations as promising practices in anti-trafficking work.
Case management approaches centered on survivor empowerment and choice, and the integration of formal employment and livelihood opportunities as part of protection services, are two of the methods mentioned in a newly published compendium of promising practices in U.S. Government-funded anti-trafficking programs. The U.S. State Department report also highlights the effectiveness of utilizing feedback from survivor focus groups, the inclusion of survivors with different experiences and backgrounds, and accommodating survivors who wish to remain anonymous. Meanwhile, enhancing survivors’ access to specialized services and allowing organizations to develop programs that reflect the needs of survivors in their community are also flagged up as impactful.
Furthermore, partnering with a broad range of organizations and communities, including those not typically enlisted in efforts to address forced labour, can expand a project’s reach and impact, says the report. The use of negotiation, consultation, and information exchange between representatives of workers and employers to establish standards for working conditions has yielded positive outcomes, while localized adaptation of the ILO forced labour indicator-based framework and its integration into existing monitoring and enforcement systems has encouraged coordination among stakeholders.
The report, entitled Promising Practices: A Review of U.S. Government-Funded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Programs, highlights projects globally that address all forms of trafficking in persons, including sex and labour trafficking involving adults or children, along the “3P” – prevention, protection, and prosecution – model, along with partnership as a complementary means to achieve progress. Examples include the Safe Migration in Central Asia (SMICA) program, implemented by Winrock International, whose promising practices are to promote survivor empowerment; work with local groups, community leaders, and governments to improve data and policies; influence social norms to decrease trafficking risks; and establish systems and services that protect at-risk groups.
The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), which provides national leadership in victim identification and assistance in the U.S., has found that enhancing access to the diverse services that victims of labour and sex trafficking often require, addressing their specific needs, and increasing the quality and quantity of specialized services, has helped its grantee organizations reach a greater number of clients. Allowing organizations the flexibility to develop programs that reflect the particular needs of survivors in their community, and to employ survivor advisory boards and staff with lived experience, advances trauma-informed, survivor-informed, and culturally competent approaches.
Collaboration with the government, private sector and civil society has helped Verité’s Forced Labor Indicators Project (FLIP) to expand and improve coordination around ongoing labour trafficking enforcement efforts in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. By adapting the ILOs’ forced labour indicator-based framework for the local context and putting the right tools in the hands of labour inspectors, business owners, workers, and service providers, the project is advancing greater supply chain transparency and accountability. Meanwhile, conducting outreach to marginalized communities and publishing information in their languages has enabled Partner of the America’s Paraguay Okakuaa project to provide thousands of children and adults with educational services, services to improve their livelihoods, and employment or business training.
While this collection of promising practices is by no means exhaustive, it provides an important starting point upon which to build anti-trafficking programming, according to the report. Additionally, while the promising practices correlate with positive results, there is not sufficient evaluation data to definitively demonstrate a causal link between them and positive outcomes. The Grantmaking Committee therefore hopes practitioners and other key stakeholders will identify ideas and approaches for combating trafficking that are worth testing in their own countries and communities, and that spur greater collaboration.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
Accountability for trafficking in persons in conflict situations remains limited and victims have little or no access to justice or remedy, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons. In a new report, Siobhán Mullally offers recommendations to states, international organizations and the International Criminal Court on ways in which to strengthen accountability, combat impunity, and ensure effective access to justice for trafficked persons.
Children and their families seeking asylum in the UK increasingly face inadequate living conditions in government-provided temporary housing, affecting their health, wellbeing, and access to education, Human Rights Watch and Just Fair say in a new report. Families often live for a year or more in inhumane conditions with a lack of healthy food or access to schooling – in breach of the UK Government’s own guidance – as a result of policy failings, wasted resources and funding cuts.
And a public inquiry into abuses at a UK immigration detention center has identified a “toxic culture” and numerous breaches of human rights laws relating to torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, as well as racist and derogatory language used by some staff towards detainees, according to a report published today.
More than four million people face difficulties accessing food, shelter, healthcare, education and formal employment in Latin America and the Caribbean despite efforts by host countries to regularize and integrate refugees and migrants from Venezuela, according to an analysis by the Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V), IOM and UNHCR. The findings show that many refugees and migrants in the region lack stable livelihood opportunities, making it difficult for them to effectively integrate and putting them at heightened risk of human trafficking, forced recruitment and gender-based violence.
A suspected case of trafficking for organ removal was recorded for the first time in Ireland last year, according to a new anti-trafficking report from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. Meanwhile, London’s Metropolitan Police force is investigating more cases of organ trafficking in the UK after new victims came forward following the first conviction for the offence under modern slavery laws earlier this year.
Corruption plays a significant role in migrant smuggling, border crossings and refugee settlement in Bulgaria, according to a news report. Paying bribe money to border police to continue a journey to western Europe, paying government workers to secure a faster asylum settlement, or exchanging cash for information on missing and deceased migrants are common in a country where corruption “is rampant and permeates ‘all levels of society’”.
Human trafficking for forced criminality in the Greater Mekong Subregion is on the rise and follows a common pattern of vulnerability exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, recruitment, control, and exploitation, as outlined in a new issue brief from UNDP and World Vision, which partnered with provincial and district level practitioners to learn more about the challenges this emerging trend presents for identifying and supporting victims.
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