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Innovative Solutions for
Ending Human Trafficking
Below are the most promising and powerful solutions to the problem of human trafficking that have emerged from the Changemakers.net Innovation Award Competition for "How to End Human Trafficking." This digest presents the best ideas and practices from the 69 competition entries from 22 countries, and also from the online discussion posts, that were submitted during the three-month competition. Changemakers hosted this competition from March 15 to June 15, 2005 in partnership with the Polaris Project and Vital Voices Global Partnership.
There is an urgent need to spread these solutions as widely as possible because human trafficking is a serious, global problem. It is the third-largest, and fastest-growing, criminal industry in the world, second only to drugs and the arms trade. The low costs and high returns make human trafficking the most lucrative "industry" today. More than 90 percent of human trafficking victims are women, of which almost 50 percent are children, the majority of whom are trafficked into sexual slavery, according to a recent ILO study. Up to 12.3 million people are trapped in forced labor that denies basic rights and dignity.
The profits derived from exploitation of trafficked women, children, and men amount to US$32 billion annually, an average of US$13,000 from every single trafficked person. It may come as a surprise to learn that human trafficking is a serious problem in the most affluent, developed nations as well as in developing and transition countries. Nearly half of the US$32 billion in profits from human trafficking are generated and absorbed in the wealthiest nations, with the largest share of this profit coming from forced commercial sex.

Go directly to:
I. Make Trafficking Less Lucrative and More Risky
A. Tighten Legal Frameworks—Establish the Rule of Law and Challenge Existing Laws
B. Influence Public Opinion and Raise Awareness
C. Develop Tighter Coordination and Closer Collaboration Between and Among Activists
and Government and Agency Officials
II. Shrink the Size of the Market
III. Reduce the Number of Victims and the Impact on Them
A. Prevent People from being Trafficked
B. Protect Victims
C. Heighten Awareness Among Potential Recruits

Make Trafficking Less Lucrative and More Risky
The most effective strategy for undermining human trafficking is to shift the equation of low start-up costs, high profits, and low risk through a focused strategy that creates obstacles to profit combined with more prosecutions and convictions.

Tighten Legal Frameworks—Establish the Rule of Law and Challenge Existing Laws

Make human trafficking a criminal offense: Enact national and transnational legislation that criminalizes traffickers. Because human trafficking is a transnational crime, it is imperative that laws cut across borders. Frame a comprehensive, single law on human trafficking in general, and on sex trafficking, labor trafficking, child labor, and domestic labor in particular.

Include victim rehabilitation in anti-trafficking legislation: The law should deter trafficking and punish traffickers, and also lay out a sustainable set of rehabilitation measures for victims that involve civil society and other community organizations. Policy should include: prevention, anti-trafficking measures, rescue, economic empowerment, healthcare services, education, childcare, housing, civic amenities, legal reforms and relief funds.

Lobby/pressure governments from within: Sit in on congressional/parliament hearings, lobby with ministers, and insist they address human trafficking issues in upcoming sessions. Make it easy for them to do so: arm government officials with complete facts and figures that lay out concrete steps for addressing the problem; draw up a cohesive plan of action; prepare draft laws; demand that laws are implemented by the relevant agencies; ensure that governments are playing a coordinating role.

De-criminalize victims of trafficking: Ensure that laws penalize traffickers, not victims. Traffickers rely on the vulnerability of their victims before trafficking them, and on their lacking a voice after being trafficked. Build a framework that changes the power balance completely by protecting victims. This will also go a long way toward making victims more willing to help crack down on trafficking operations.

Ensure stringent policing and punishment: Lobby for fast-track prosecution of traffickers. This would be a paradigm shift for bureaucracies that are generally slow to take action. Match this with an overhauling of sentencing guidelines so that offenders do serious jail time. Concentrate on tracking and arresting the kingpins, not the lower-order pimp or agent.

Build task forces: Develop strong multidisciplinary response teams to human trafficking. Task forces should include three critical nodes for successful responses: legal and victim services, law enforcement, and training. Identify gaps in services.

Train ordinary citizens to do "social policing" where everyone is a stakeholder: Every citizen should be trained to be vigilant and watchful for potential human traffickers to close the gap between citizens and the police. Professionals need to train the public to recognize human trafficking cases; to collect information in order to file the legal complaints or reports required to start an investigation; procedures for filing charges; judicial processes; witnessing; which authorities to notify. Citizens should be made aware of their rights and the steps they can take. Beyond this, authorities need to be trained to act on citizen reports and complaints.

Influence Public Opinion and Raise Awareness

Turn up the pressure on traffickers by keeping them in the media glare: Use media skillfully to highlight issues. Use advocacy campaigns, public debates and mainstream media vehicles—print, electronic, TV, and film—to turn the spotlight on traffickers and their victims. Keep the spotlight turned on them. The U.S. Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 as a direct response to Gillian Caldwell's 1997 video on human trafficking that provoked a fierce outcry.

Use sting operations to catch perpetrators in the act: Perform the watchdog role for the community through investigative journalism and sting operations. This will aid the relevant agencies in flushing out perpetrators and rescuing victims.

Put human rights issues squarely into school curricula: To build a zero-tolerance society in the long term, we need a groundswell of informed public opinion that will reject trafficking in all its manifestations. Start early by getting young people thinking and analyzing what's wrong with a society where human trafficking exists, and how they can change that.

Develop Tighter Coordination and Closer Collaboration Between and Among Activists and Government and Agency Officials

Build national and international solidarity to combat human trafficking: To ensure active networking and strategic collaboration between citizen sector organizations that work in the "field," and anti-trafficking departments of the government charged with prevention, prosecution, protection, compensation, and rehabilitation.

Formalize advisory and steering committees to promote a greater focus: This is what the structure can look like: [1] A national committee that is the highest policy decision-making body; [2] national multisector coordinators who provide leadership in implementation and review and monitor progress; and [3] a national executive committee that provides technical leadership and is responsible for coordination.

Make heavyweight, international policy-development organizations accountable: Bodies such as the World Bank, UN, IOM, and ILO can promulgate anti-trafficking, cross-border strategies that provide protection, punitive legislation, immigration checks, and zero-tolerance policies. Emphasis must be placed on scaling?up preventative efforts. Policy organizations must work in tandem with local project partners that have responsibility for implementation.

Beef up government intervention by actively receiving external grants: Do not shy away from accepting grants from international sources that are earmarked for human trafficking issues. National governments will find this funding very handy to supplement their budgets and will, moreover, be forced to drop excuses for not having adequate resources to vigorously attack trafficking.

Increase your circle of outreach: Actively involve all stakeholders and turn awareness-building into a movement. Engage the police and allied forces, citizen sector organizations, administrators, high-profile government officials, legal and welfare departments, the criminal justice system, concerned individuals, and youth and children. Get everyone moving!

Involve youth and local clubs in a community-driven approach: Local clubs—the hub of every neighborhood—can take the lead in several respects. For example, club houses can function as drop-in centers or safe houses for children. Youth clubs can be leaders and play advocate, educator, and watchdog. They can realize their potential for reaching out to local political parties and the larger community.

Shrink the Size of the Market
Prostitution customers and employers of trafficked labor and consumers of the products they generate comprise the market for trafficking. A demand-focused strategy shrinks the overall size of the industry and reduces traffickers' profits. Given the transnational nature of trafficking, focusing on destination countries is a highly efficient strategy.

Encourage fair trade: Ban products made with the sweat of slave labor. Raise consumer consciousness to stop buying such products. Make it mandatory for products to display labels like Fairtrade or Rugmark. The latter, for instance, assures customers that no child labor has been used to make the carpets they want to buy.

Aggressively produce and promote exposés: Lay bare the victim-criminal nexus: identify the kingpins and reveal how the system aids and abets human rights abuses; use actual examples to highlight issues and make them real for all citizens.

Use role models to initiate behavior change: Recruit popular culture icons to promote messages that stem demand and supply by sensitizing and scaring potential victims and violators. Highlight issues with events such as the concert organized by MTV in Southeastern Europe, UNESCO's pop concert in Thailand, or soccer matches with famous players from around the world. Weave these issues into the stories of popular radio or TV soap operas.

Get corporations to launch "codes of conduct": Get socially responsible businesses to commit to a particular cause and then promote it actively. For example, businesses can reframe their labor policies to conform to support anti-trafficking measures.

Reduce the Number of Victims and the Impact on Them
Most victims of human trafficking belong to highly vulnerable, oppressed socioeconomic groups, and they could be victims of violence, war, inequality, discrimination, or natural disasters. Some of the push factors include poverty, lack of economic opportunities, familial abuse or neglect and deception. A wide range of measures that reduce poverty and inequality are the key to shielding vulnerable populations. Human beings will cease to be potential victims when they are given meaningful choices and can avoid dependence on groups that exploit such vulnerabilities.

Prevent People from being Trafficked

Demand more caring governments: Keep the pressure on governments to provide initiatives that alleviate poverty, spearhead literacy drives, improve healthcare systems, offer free mid-day meal programs for poor school children, open up skills-based training centers, and provide extension education as an important step in creating aware citizens.

Build community capacity and create value-driven communities: Focus on social and economic empowerment of the poor and marginalized populations of society who should be offered the following: (a) life skills—a full education, and the potential for assuming leadership roles in the community and becoming agents of change; (b) community development—electricity; health, education, underage marriage under duress, violence against women and children, and domestic child labor; (c) income generation—self-help groups and; (d) earning opportunities within the community to stem out-migration, including sponsorships; skills development; microenterprise development; entrepreneurship openings, banking mechanisms; and enhanced access to markets.

Embolden trafficking survivors to speak out: Enable victims to advocate against human trafficking. By using self-example, victims can highlight the sordidness, brutality, physical and mental abuse, lack of options and freedom, and ignominy of being a slave in modern times.

Register survivors in peer-to-peer programs: Enroll survivors and victims to act as catalysts of change and inform potential victims about their rights, existing public benefits systems, self-care, safety, self-worth and empowerment.

Stop second-generation sex trafficking: Intervention is needed with children of victims to protect them from being forced into servitude. Comprehensive intervention offerings can include: night care centers, education, help with alternative job possibilities, moving out of red-light areas to stay with relatives, and gaining admission to state-run rescue homes co-managed by citizen sector organizations.

Toll-free hotline telephone service for at-risk populations: Helplines should offer a range of services for potential victims that incorporate counseling, support, and protection. These include referral, legal recourse options, information about who to contact for help (anti-trafficking cells, local police stations, citizen sector organizations). Hotlines should also provide referrals to organizations that help at-risk persons find alternative life options. Merge grassroots micro-level intervention with information technology and telecommunications to make a hotline service an efficient link between victims and citizen protection voluntary agencies, government agencies, academic institutions, businesses, and others. Hotline add-on facilities can include: emergency shelter for victims, repatriation, medical aid, rescue, emotional support and guidance, counseling, rehabilitation, follow-up to prevent re-trafficking, and data collection.

Protect Victims

Design appropriate and feasible rehabilitation services to prevent re-trafficking: Make viable employment opportunities available to victims or help them gain income generation skills. Sexually trafficked men, women, and children should be regarded as victims. Exit and rehabilitation strategies should be developed for them and also marketed to the general population. Design and finance appropriate exit plans and services for victims such as safe houses, life skills programs, counseling services, start-up funds. Post-rescue care and suitable life options are vital to total rehabilitation.

Open safe spaces for trafficking survivors: "Safe spaces" can enhance victims' psychological and social well - being, and have the potential to help give them a sense of control over their lives. Such physical spaces help ex-victims make the transition to becoming survivors who feel secure enough to face both their strengths and vulnerabilities. Survivors who are ready to meet together in a group and take the path of self-empowering activities should be encouraged to do so. To make this sustainable, corporate houses can provide mentorship to survivors. Safe spaces have the potential to create a ripple effect of solidarity among survivors, stabilize clients and their families, and help survivors become catalysts for change through active participation in the healing process.

Create virtual job databases and online learning materials for victims and citizen sector organizations: Such databases help ensure reintegration through job placement. Add-ons can include training for how to present oneself to employers, how to get successfully employed; and information about where to get skills training. This is a useful tool for citizen sector organizations that will use this information to assist victims.

Develop Web sites that provide information about trafficking: The information and data on these sites can help develop impact-oriented anti-trafficking projects. Data can include the availability of trainings in rescue techniques, information about resources for victims offered by rehabilitation referral organizations and how to seek redress.

Sensitize anti-trafficking staff in how to handle victims: Agencies that receive referrals of trafficking victims must be made sensitive to the vulnerabilities, feelings of distrust, and disenfranchisement that victims typically feel. They may not want to return to their communities for fear of censure, humiliation, mortification, and shame. Staff should be trained both to follow certain processes and to understand the channels for redress.

Confiscate traffickers' assets and merge into a common fund for victim rehabilitation: Seizure and forfeiture of traffickers' assets can be turned into a financial incentive for law enforcement agencies, while simultaneously providing additional revenues needed to support trafficking victims. An example: an incentive payment can be provided to the investigating officer and public prosecutor: 5 percent each; witnesses, 5 percent; police welfare fund: 10 percent; victim compensation: 35 percent; and rest to the state for prevention, awareness, rehabilitation.

Heighten Awareness Among Potential Recruits

Change environments and communities: Make communities accountable to at-risk populations through powerful messages, e.g., A female child is not a burden; Women have a status in society; Education is empowerment.

Make communication doubly effective through "involved contact": Use drama, songs, and street plays to reach out to an illiterate or rural/tribal audience. Entertainment, when coupled with the enactment of real-life scenarios that are relevant to a particular community, work well in changing perceptions and help overcome barriers and resistance to new ideas.

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