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Human Trafficking
Part 3 of a 7 part series
Supporting Survivors of Human Trafficking
Survivors of human trafficking often discover that human traffickers have taken control of their financial identity or banking products and limited or prevented their access to the financial system, spoiling their credit record and hindering their financial reintegration. Financial institutions and civil society can play an important role in assisting survivors in the recovery process by providing them access to digital financial services, such as online microcredit, without requiring traditional identity documentation. Governments can also play a role by supporting the use of digital financial services and innovative tools to assist victims who have been harmed financially. Digital identity solutions and access to digital financial services can help victims securely obtain financial assistance from governments or NGOs, access victim support services, repair their credit, and receive restitution payments when appropriate and available.
Enabling human trafficking survivors’ participation in the regulated financial sector is critical. The Liechtenstein Initiative for Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking is a public-private partnership launched in September 2018 to respond to calls from the G7, the G20, the UN General Assembly, and the UN Security Council for governments to partner with the private sector to address human trafficking. Its Survivor Inclusion Initiative works to facilitate survivor access to basic banking services, such as checking and savings accounts by connecting survivors to financial institutions. To support survivors in rebuilding their lives and preventing further exploitation, the financial sector can offer account qualification exception programs and low-to-no fee second chance accounts. Governments, investors, researchers, and civil-society actors should explore how microfinance and other forms of social finance can support survivors.
ACKNOWLEDGING HISTORICAL AND ONGOING HARM: THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SYSTEMIC RACISM AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING
In many ways, the United States and other governments face human trafficking challenges and trends today that reflect the living legacy of the systemic racism and colonization globalized during the transatlantic slave trade through chattel slavery and regional practices of indigenous dispossession. U.S. and global data show human traffickers disproportionately target those in positions of socioeconomic or political vulnerability due to discriminatory policies, who are often people of color or part of a racial minority. While U.S. efforts to combat human trafficking have grown in magnitude and sophistication over the years, the United States still struggles with how to address the disparate effects of human trafficking on racial minority communities. To be truly effective, a comprehensive approach to prosecution, protection, and—most of all—prevention must embed racial justice and equity across its policies and programs. The U.S. Department of State leads the U.S. government’s global engagement to combat human trafficking and chairs the federal interagency anti-trafficking task force. As part of this work, it commits to engaging with its interagency, civil society, private sector, multilateral, and survivor leader partners to better understand systemic racism’s effects on the human trafficking field and to integrate racial equity more intentionally into the U.S. anti-trafficking response.
Years of studies, data, and the direct knowledge of those with lived experience of human trafficking demonstrate that systemic racism undercuts the intended goals of prosecuting traffickers, protecting those victimized, and preventing human trafficking in significant ways. This body of information provides a strong foundation from which to learn. For instance, advocates, survivors, and other experts have found that ingrained racial biases and stereotypes, which were created as a way to dehumanize certain racial communities to justify their exploitation and exclusion, hinder progress in anti-trafficking efforts because they lead to racially disparate assumptions about who is a trafficker and who should have access to victim protection and services. These stereotypes may affect, for example, which communities law enforcement target for anti-trafficking operations, which victim witnesses the criminal justice system deems credible, and which individuals process their experiences as exploitation and seek help. Traffickers, in turn, factor these racial biases and stereotypes into schemes and strategies aimed at reducing their own risk of getting caught while increasing the risk of law enforcement improperly penalizing victims.
Another powerful way systemic racism has perpetuated human trafficking and hindered anti-trafficking efforts is through discriminatory government policies and private practices that create disparities in access to economic means or opportunities, which traffickers exploit to compel victims in sex trafficking or forced labor. Predatory and exclusionary practices that keep certain racial communities from attaining financial stability and building generational wealth provide traffickers ample opportunity to offer tempting alternatives. These harmful practices include redlining, lending discrimination, unequal distribution of government subsidies and services, restricted entry into white collar or higher paying jobs, and intentional exclusions of certain professions from worker protections.
The inequities created by systemic racism have survived in part because of the intentional destruction of certain racial groups’ social support networks. Traffickers often seek out individuals with weaker community or family connections, knowing they have fewer safeguards. The chattel slavery system relied on the separation of family units during auctions and trading of enslaved people. It restricted where and how enslaved people could gather or socialize to weaken communal bonds to avoid a unified rebellion for freedom. This pattern of fracturing families and communities has led to an unjust overrepresentation of Black individuals in other systems, like prisons, runaway and homeless youth services, and foster or institutional care, that exacerbate the social isolation and vulnerability on which traffickers prey. Similar family separation policies were used to weaken or destroy indigenous families and communities, including forcibly removing Native children from their families and tribes to send them to “boarding schools” with the intention of forcing them to assimilate and no longer identify with their culture. Such policies have resulted in an ongoing disproportionate number of Native children in the child welfare system, increasing their vulnerability to human trafficking.
These are only a few of the many manifestations of systemic racism that inhibit an effective anti-trafficking response. The following excerpts highlight the reflections of some who have directly experienced the ways in which systemic racism intersects with human trafficking in the United States and provide insight and guidance on how best to move forward.
“It was only when I decided to escape my trafficker that I realized how pronounced racial injustice was in my community, particularly against human trafficking survivors with previous arrest records…. Human trafficking continues to be a critical threat to Black communities. We need better support that doesn’t criminalize survivors but protects our rights instead. Standing in solidarity with Black lives also means speaking up for the injustices plaguing Black communities that are overwhelmed with trafficking victims. First, we must understand the disparities that disproportionately affect Black trafficking survivors. Then, we must do a better job supporting survivors when they escape. Many victims struggle with a long list of criminal offenses that follow them for the rest of their lives.”
– Lyresh Magee,
Entrepreneur, Cosmotologist, Graduate from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (Cast), Los Angeles
“Racism has made Black trafficking survivors and other survivors of color feel invisible. It has exacerbated our isolation, increased our stress, and undermined our efforts to recover from trauma…. Survivors have known that the justice system is flawed: just ask the victims arrested and prosecuted for their traffickers’ crimes.”
– Fainess Lipenga,
Training Advisor to The Human Trafficking Legal Center
“We were sold for a certain amount of money for 30 minutes or an hour. Allow me to repeat myself: we were SOLD. In my case, being a person of color sold by a white person to other white people was painful on multiple levels. It wasn’t until my adult years that I was able to process how closely this aligned with racial oppression. I can’t compare one victim’s experience to another’s, but I will say that race can add an additional layer of oppression.”
– A survivor’s/we’d account,
as featured by Yvette Young, Bree’Ana Johnson, Christopher Bidorini, and Erin Williamson
“There are many jurisdictions that are predominantly White yet the most being exploited, arrested and children taken into custody are women of color. There is a big problem of Black and Brown bodies being treated differently from White bodies. It’s not that people of color do more drugs, are more engaged in criminal behavior, it’s that they are more vulnerable, more targeted by the police for prostitution and other crimes. There is a connection and a disparity from police profiling, arrest, incarceration rates, sentencing, and recidivism. When a White person goes missing, you hear about it every five minutes. In contrast, when Black and Brown bodies go missing you don’t hear about their disappearance anywhere near as often, if at all.”
– Autumn Burris,
Founding CEO, Survivors for Solutions, featured in ECPAT-USA’s “Survivor Perspective” blog series
Building a just world, where traffickers can no longer capitalize on and abuse systemic inequities, requires addressing the underlying causes of those inequities by first acknowledging the structures of power and historical context behind unequal distribution of privilege and protection, including the government’s role. While the racial dimensions of human trafficking manifest in different ways in each country, human trafficking still mirrors—and thrives because of—widespread inequities between racial groups. This is seen, for example, in the overrepresentation of human trafficking victims among Black populations in some parts of South America, the lack of protections afforded to migrant workers in the Gulf that creates a dependence on others that traffickers can exploit, and the intentional targeting of Roma communities through law enforcement anti-trafficking operations in Eastern Europe. For the United States, this means confronting its history of chattel slavery, indigenous dispossession, and the centuries-long racial campaigns of violence, fear, and trauma that followed. As the United States strives to grapple with its past and increasingly root its anti-trafficking work in racial equity, it must also draw from the courage, expertise, and leadership of communities harmed by the interlocking cruelties of systemic racism and human trafficking. We invite other governments and global partners to join in this effort and hold each other accountable.
CHILD-FRIENDLY SPACES FOR SURVIVORS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING
The needs of child trafficking victims and the related legal reporting requirements differ significantly from those of adult victims. Government authorities and service providers should take special measures to ensure appropriate and tailored support and care are available to them. Children should receive immediate support and assistance in a safe and comfortable setting that is not intimidating or retraumatizing. Child-friendly spaces are an essential component to holistic victim-centered and trauma-informed care for child survivors of human trafficking.
Child-friendly spaces have traditionally been used in refugee camps or after natural disasters, but increasingly those in the anti-trafficking field are using them to provide comprehensive assistance and support to child trafficking victims in other settings. These spaces, which can be a separate room or even just a corner of a regular interview room, are typically located in existing structures such as police stations or hospitals and are administered by the government or an NGO. The use of child-friendly spaces reflects a multidisciplinary approach, providing a place for children to feel safe in the wake of trauma and for social workers, medical professionals, law enforcement, and others to conduct victim interviews, psychosocial counseling, and medical care all in the same location. In addition to putting a child trafficking victim at ease by providing a safe and structured environment for play and learning, such spaces also can help facilitate the prosecution of human traffickers by offering critical support to children as they provide information to law enforcement to help hold perpetrators accountable.
While they may look slightly different depending on their particular function, the country in which they operate, or the level of resources available, effective child-friendly spaces often share common features that can be replicated as promising practices.
First, child-friendly spaces provide a calm and reassuring physical environment. This is accomplished by providing age-appropriate furniture and decorations, painting the walls in calming colors, and displaying children’s artwork or murals. Toys, art supplies, and age-appropriate books are also provided. A comforting environment and informal play can assist survivors in expressing their feelings of fear and distress while also supporting their resiliency.
Second, ensuring that a child feels safe is crucial, which means that the physical space must be easily accessible, ideally through its own entrance and exit, and separates the survivor from the perpetrator to prevent further trauma. A safe space affords children privacy so they can talk about their experiences more freely. Staff and relevant stakeholders should be able to observe the child from a separate room, where appropriate.
Third, a multidisciplinary child-friendly space provides survivors with an array of comprehensive services and referral networks in one place. In addition to addressing immediate needs by providing food, water, and sanitary facilities, a child-friendly space should address longer-term needs through the provision of medical screening and services, psychosocial counseling, referrals, and information about legal proceedings. Receiving various services in one place and during the same timeframe shields the survivor from having to repeat the story of what happened to them multiple times.
Finally, all services provided in the space should be trauma-informed, age-appropriate, and culturally and linguistically sensitive. This means that service providers can recognize signs of trauma in individuals and respond by integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, practices, and settings. This approach considers the vulnerabilities and experiences of trauma survivors and places priority on restoring a survivor’s feelings of safety, choice, and control. Service providers should make sure children understand their rights and are empowered to make decisions about their own care, where appropriate. A trauma-informed approach should ultimately build trust and transparency between survivors and service providers, and it must also be responsive to gender, age, ethnic, and cultural differences. This last component is crucial, as interviewing and service provision that is not trauma-informed or in the best interest of the child can be retraumatizing and inhibit a successful recovery.
Given constraints around physical space and financial resources, service providers and NGOs may need to develop creative ways to establish a child-friendly space. If a separate room is not available, a child-friendly corner of a larger interview room can also serve as a designated section that is welcoming to children. When assessing needs, a child-friendly waiting room might take priority.
The COVID-19 pandemic increases children’s vulnerability to trafficking for several cross-cutting reasons. Families may require children to find work due to lost income, government and NGO protection services may be reduced, and children might not be attending school where they have access to trusted adults. Because of this increased vulnerability, establishing and maintaining child-friendly spaces is critical to prioritize during the pandemic; they can even be a safe place where children learn about public health protections such as social distancing, mask wearing, and proper hygiene.
THE KAFALA SYSTEM
Every year adults and, to a lesser extent, children migrate voluntarily to countries in the Middle East to work in a variety of sectors, such as agriculture, construction, and domestic service. Many of these migrant workers must abide by the kafala system, in effect mostly in the Gulf states (Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), Jordan, and Lebanon.
The kafala system is a sponsorship-based visa category that gives employers full control over the migrant workers’ residency permits, movements in and out of the country, and ability to change employers. Under this sponsorship system, migrant workers who leave their place of employment without permission from their employer forfeit their legal status and thereby increase their risk of arrest and deportation.
The kafala system’s rules and limitations enable abusive employers’ to use unscrupulous employment practices that can constitute forced labor; including excessive work hours; retention of passports and travel documents by the employers; non-payment of wages; and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse or threats of abuse. These trafficking victims have little or no recourse; they are coerced either to remain in an exploitative position or leave their sponsor and face arrest, detention, or deportation for immigration offenses, or even punishment for unlawful acts their traffickers compelled them to commit.
REFORMING THE KAFALA SYSTEM
Allowing migrant workers to have full freedom of movement and to switch employers without penalty would help prevent human trafficking. In addition, providing migrant workers with information on their rights and obligations, on complaint mechanisms in case of abuse, and on how to access assistance and remedies, would empower them to identify and leave exploitative situations. Efforts to reform the kafala system and develop non-exploitative policies would benefit from input and recommendations from survivors who experienced forced labor under this system.
In addition to reforming the kafala system, governments should also consider ratifying the ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) and draw on its Recommendation (R201), which offers concrete actions to help prevent domestic servitude. States can take additional measures to address the vulnerabilities to human trafficking created by the kafala system, such as those described below.
Labor-Sending Countries and Pre-departure Measures:
- Public Outreach: Use information and communication technologies, such as websites, digital links, and apps, to provide information to prospective workers in languages they understand on labor and immigration laws in the destination country, jobs available, the rights and responsibilities of workers and employers, model or standard government-approved contracts, indicators of human trafficking, contact information for relevant hotlines or missions abroad, and reputable recruitment agencies.
- Prevention through Responsible Recruitment: Provide adequate government oversight of recruitment agencies and provide prospective applicants with information on means to verify recruitment agencies’ legitimacy and licensing. Migrant workers should be provided with their own copy of a work contract, clearly outlining the terms and conditions of employment and residency, including their wages, hours of work and rest, and mode of payment. To avoid debt manipulation, workers should not be subject to recruitment or work visa fees by their recruiters or employers—all costs associated with getting the job should be paid by the employer—nor should the cost of their live-in accommodation and work-related items, such as uniforms or tools, be deducted from their remuneration.
- Visa Application: Encourage in-person visa applications on the part of destination countries, including for domestic workers. During visa processing, provide applicants with information pamphlets on their rights and obligations, and those of employers, as well as their entitlements to retain a copy of their contract and original travel and identity documents. Inform visa applicants about available legal protections against crimes such as violence, trafficking in persons, and deprivation of liberty, including complaint mechanisms and hotline numbers.
MEASURES IN LABOR-RECEIVING COUNTRIES:
- Visa Sponsorship: Reform the kafala system to allow all workers to have full freedom of movement and to change their sponsor or employer voluntarily and without prior sponsor permission, fees, penalties, or loss of residency status. Provide migrant workers with information on their rights and obligations, as well as on access to grievance mechanisms and to appropriate and effective remedies, such as compensation. Provide protection to victims, including temporary or permanent residency status to foreign victims along with access to services such as food, shelter, and medical and psycho-social assistance, while giving them the option to remain in the country and switch employers or return to their home country, or a third country for those who cannot return home.
- Hotlines: Provide workers information on their rights and obligations, including access to help and information on labor rights, grievance mechanisms, and proper reporting channels. Inform workers about the availability of hotlines operated 24 hours every day, staffed with Arabic and English interpreters, and with on-call contractors for languages spoken by foreign workers’ most common nationalities.
- Identification and Prosecution: Proactively and effectively identify victims of forced labor and investigate, prosecute, and convict those who commit or facilitate forced labor under anti-trafficking laws, rather than treating instances of forced labor as administrative violations. Punish perpetrators and facilitators with significant prison terms under anti-trafficking laws and deny or restrict unscrupulous employers and sponsors from hiring migrant workers, including domestic workers. Ensure domestic workers are included in anti-trafficking and labor law protections.
- Prevention through Responsible Recruitment: Provide adequate government oversight of recruitment agencies, including through registration, licensing, and monitoring. Governments should publish the names and contact details of all licensed and registered recruiters, as well as those under investigation for non-compliance or whose licenses have been revoked. Recruitment agencies should be held accountable in a manner to deter their engaging in activities that exacerbate workers’ vulnerability to human trafficking—such as visa trading, charging workers for the cost of recruitment, and contract switching.
- Specialized Units: Establish specialized units in concerned ministries and agencies focused on human trafficking, including forced labor, and provide training to law enforcement, labor, and judicial officials on trafficking indicators and victim-centered and trauma-informed approaches. Empower units with mandates to proactively investigate labor exploitation cases and conduct parallel financial investigations with a view to identify human trafficking and related money laundering. Encourage collaboration across directorates and ministries, including labor, as well as public and private financial institutions, to facilitate criminal prosecution of forced labor cases.
- Screening and Assistance: Implement formal identification, referral, and assistance procedures, including in detention centers and among vulnerable populations, using a victim-centered approach that is also informed by the input and recommendations of survivors. Facilitate access to complaint mechanisms and dispute resolution, arbitration, and pro-bono representation to help victims pursue legal civil and criminal remedies. Allow victims to submit testimony in written form or via recording to protect them. Advise them on how to secure restitution and payment of back wages.
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
- Memoranda of Understanding with Governments: Strengthen and enforce bilateral labor agreements with labor sending countries to include provisions on minimum wages, recruitment oversight, and entitlements such as work hours, mandatory time off, and in-home living and working conditions. Agreements could also include methods of coordination and cooperation on active cross-border human trafficking cases that involve victims and perpetrators from both countries. Governments should actively implement these agreements and ensure their offered protections are implemented in practice.
- Diplomatic Households: Increase efforts to inform and train diplomatic personnel about the crime of human trafficking and the applicable anti-trafficking law in the country of residence. Institute a system of in-pers/on? registration and interviews for domestic workers of diplomatic personnel, so as to regularize communication, monitor their treatment, and potentially identify instances of abuse or human trafficking.
- Cross-country Collaboration: Investigate allegations of forced labor reported by repatriated victims, offer judicial assistance such as providing remote statements from victims to be used in court proceedings, and extradite traffickers. Facilitate accreditation and monitoring of recruitment agencies between countries of origin and destination. Cooperate with the corporate business sector to encourage and facilitate ethical sourcing in supply chains. Establish a regional research and training center to train frontline stakeholders on human trafficking case identification and management.
LETTER ON LGBTQI+ VULNERABILITY TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING
The Department of State received the following letter in response to its annual “Federal Register” notice requesting information relevant to countries’ progress in addressing human trafficking. By publishing it, with the author’s consent, the Department seeks to shine a light on a population particularly vulnerable to human trafficking that is often misunderstood and overlooked. The Department has highlighted the vulnerability of LGBTQI+ individuals, the trafficking risks they face, and the challenges associated with victim identification and protection around the world. The circumstances of LGBTQI+ individuals, including threats of public disclosure of their sexual orientation or gender identity, are not isolated to foreign countries.
Dear Reader,
It was the winter after my 19th year; my mother was informed that I was seeing a boy. The conversation started, “I have never been so humiliated; how was I supposed to maintain my composure?” After a few moments of inquiring, I was informed of what was so humiliating to her, me. I knew my family loathed gays. I had grown up in the United States during the AIDS pandemic, hearing “the only good [expletive] is a dead one,” or “it is their punishment for being how they are, they deserve it.” My family openly praised my uncle’s contraction of HIV and waited for his death. When the tables turned onto me, I already knew their opinions. When I was told, “you will either be a child of mine or gay,” I simply said fine and walked out the door with the few items I could carry. That was the year Matthew Shepard was beaten and left for dead hanging on a fence.
That first month I was learning the ‘safe’ spots to park my car to sleep. I was cleaning up in bathrooms and going to college and work. Then the church started the process of ex-communication to revoke my college scholarships because they believed I was willingly living my life in sin. I finished out the semester and decided I would wait for a bit to finish college. After four years and three promotions at work, I was told, “you are too gay; if you want to continue working here, you will go back in the closet.” I figured within the previous two months I had already lost my house, my family, and my college scholarship—at that point, what was my job? I went to the city north of my hometown and started couch surfing with people from the clubs I went to.
I then started working in escorting services through a bar where I didn’t know the rates charged, didn’t handle the money, and had little to no control over refusing clients who were violent or wouldn’t use condoms. Some of us were there to pay off the debts owed to the bar owner. We were given drugs that kept us numb. Our debts were too high. We paid daily for a bed, for the space at the bar, for the help the bar owners gave us. When we couldn’t pay, we slept on subways, in empty warehouses, in cars, or on couches. We traveled a lot; we were always on the road between cities, between states, and wherever we were told to go. Thankfully, a bar owner friend would stitch us up without a hospital visit when we were hurt, so we didn’t have another bill. There were always lies, and it was never as glamorous as we were promised. Do you get to choose to be abused in a society where death is the alternative?
Living in abandoned places meant our cars were taken, we were mugged, we had our modest apartments broke into—life was hard. In three years, I had slept with over 500 people. When there was an error at the local health clinic, and my blood got mixed up with another person’s, I tested false positive for AIDS. I always expected to test positive, so when I retested, I was in shock when it came back negative. I left the escort service at that point. I knew I was playing with fire.
Many of us loathe the churches that allowed us to be abused with their hatred of us from the pulpit. Many of us are sexually assaulted by family, peers in schools, our ministers, or coaches. Over half of us on the streets are there because we were thrown out for being ourselves. Forty percent of those on the streets are LGBTQI+. We are the unwanted, the forgotten, the lost kids of the streets that no one misses or looks for. We aren’t victims because we “chose” this life. We are trafficked to survive; we are abused because we are unwanted, and we have to fight to be heard in the society we live in. Our bodies are lying in alleys and warehouses unnoticed; we are pawns in a system that doesn’t care about us. We need to overcome the years of institutional bias and discrimination by politicians trying to criminalize our use of bathrooms or marriages. We need to be seen as people. We need to be seen as people experiencing victimization. We need to be told this isn’t normal and that we are experiencing victimization.
– Nat Paul
Subject Matter Expert with Lived Experience of Human Trafficking
Human Trafficking: Supporting Survivors of Human Trafficking
Part 3 of a 7 part series
https://discerning-Islam.org
Last Updated: 07/2022
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