Combatting Human Trafficking since Palermo: What Do We Know about What Works?

ABSTRACT

In 2016, there were an estimated 40.3 million victims of modern slavery in the world, more than were enslaved during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Since the adoption of the 2000 UN Trafficking Protocol, numerous efforts from inter-governmental agencies, governmental agencies, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), and domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have strived to combat the phenomena of human trafficking through legal-institutional means, direct interventions, and programs of support for those exploited. This anti-trafficking work has paid varying degrees of attention to the principles and methods of monitoring, evaluation, and impact assessment, but has often been subject to the end of project evaluations. Similar to findings of reviews of evaluations in the international development sector, evaluations of anti-trafficking programing have primarily focused on assessing the progress of project implementation and the achievement of outputs, rather than tracking the achievement of outcomes or impact. This is further complicated by the hidden nature of human trafficking and the trauma experienced by human-trafficking victims. As a consequence, despite some evidence of raised awareness and increased levels of funding, organizations are still struggling to demonstrate impact and discern what works to combat human trafficking. This article analyses the evaluations of counter-trafficking programing produced since the Protocol to draw conclusions regarding the lessons learned from these interventions and the methods used to monitor and evaluate human-trafficking programs. By highlighting gaps, this article provides a series of suggestions on how to better track progress and impact toward the elimination of modern slavery.

KEYWORDS:

• Measurement
• baseline
• monitoring
• evaluation
• impact assessment
• attribution
• contribution
• theory of change
• causal inference

Acknowledgments

We are particularly grateful to Bernadette Joudo who completed many of the searches for the promising practices database. The Minderoo Foundation funded the development of the promising practices database, with support from the Freedom Fund.

We are also grateful to Elena Abrusci and Kathryn Walker who carried out the background research on monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment for this article. Funding has come from the Rights Lab, a Beacon of Excellence at the University of Nottingham.

Todd Landman receives funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council’s Impact Accelerator Award (IAA) and is the host of The Rights Track (www.rightstrack.org), a human rights podcast series funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the ESRC, and the Rights Lab. Series 3 and 4 of The Rights Track are dedicated to the issue of modern slavery. This work was supported by the Economic and Social Council [grant number ES/K00803X/1]; the University of Nottingham; and the Nuffield Foundation.

Notes

¹ In November 2018, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study for of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition held at Yale University held an international conference “Fighting Modern Slavery: What Works?” which brought together academics, NGOs, government agencies, and private sector organizations to examine different efforts to combat modern slavery. The conference covered much ground, but it was clear that despite the increased attention to the issue of modern slavery, much more work is needed to understand how and in what way anti-slavery interventions can make a demonstrable impact.

² The logic of impact assessments has evolved initially from Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), to Social Impact Assessment (SIA) to Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) See Götzmann, Vanclay, & Seier (2016); Harrison and Stephenson (2010); Landman (2006); Vanclay (2003).

³ The promising practices database covers all forms of modern slavery. This article contains a summary of the methodology used to develop the database, however, given the focus of this special issue, only those evaluations categorized as covering human trafficking are reviewed in the results section. A paper reviewing all evaluations related to modern slavery and related phenomena, including a more detailed description of the methodology, can be found on the Minderoo Foundation website. The database is current as of 31^st December 2015. See https://www.minderoo.com.au/promising-practices/

⁴ “Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms.”

⁵ “End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.”

⁶ “Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.”

⁷ “Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.”

⁸ Of 183 countries included in the 2019 Measurement, Action, Freedom report, released by the Minderoo Foundation’s Walk Free Initiative. See www.globalslaveryindex.org

⁹ The Global Modern Slavery Directory provides a list of 2,978 NGOs working on modern slavery by country. As of 6^th August 2019, available at: http://www.globalmodernslavery.org/.

¹⁰ The Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner mapped multi-agency anti-slavery partnerships across the UK and found that most areas of the UK have some form of partnership in place. Interactive map available at: http://iascmap.nottingham.ac.uk/

¹¹ Adapted from 3ie definition of impact evaluation. http://www.3ieimpact.org/en/evidence/impact-evaluations/

¹² See Appendix 1 for the full search criteria.

¹³ See Appendix 2 for the inclusion criteria for the final database.

¹⁴ See https://www.minderoo.com.au/promising-practices/

¹⁵ All term lists are available in Bryant and Joudo (2018).

¹⁶ Adapted from Farrington et al. (2002).

¹⁷ Numbers do not equal 179. Evaluations and programmes often covered multiple countries and therefore multiple regions.

¹⁸ Data taken from Polaris Global Modern Slavery Directory. Figures represent number of organizations which list English as an operating language as of 6 August 2019.

¹⁹ Initial searches were conducted for truncated versions of “trafficking” and “evaluation” of academic, 3ie, UNODC, ILO, IOM, and DEC databases. These searches took place in August 2019 and will continue throughout latter part of 2019.

²⁰ Most recent data that could be found.