APRIES Blog Piece for BTS
A word on this week’s blog:
This blog is brought to you by Nnenne Onyioha-Clayton, the Program Manager for the African Programming and Research Initiative to End Slavery Senegal Program. Through measuring the prevalence of human trafficking for vulnerable populations, APRIES seeks to implement effective anti-human trafficking programs. Read on to learn more about the ways APRIES is fighting to end human trafficking.
The African Programming and Research Initiative to End Slavery
By Nnenne Onyioha-Clayton, Program Manager for APRIES Senegal
We are APRIES
The African Programming and Research Initiative to End Slavery (APRIES) is an international consortium of anti-slavery researchers and policy advocates from the University of Georgia (UGA) and the University of Liverpool (UoL), conceived by APRIES Director Dr. David Okech of UGA and APRIES Associate Director Dr. Alex Balch of UoL. With funding from the Department of State’s Program to End Modern Slavery (PEMS), our mission is to significantly reduce the prevalence of modern slavery worldwide through transforming the ability of community-engaged agencies to implement anti-human trafficking prevention, prosecution and protection strategies.
We Fight Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is a violation of human rights for purpose of profit. According to the Department of State (2020), “‘Human trafficking,’ ‘trafficking in persons,’ and ‘modern slavery’ are umbrella terms used to refer to both sex trafficking and compelled labor. Relevant U.S. and international law describe this compelled service using a number of different terms, including involuntary servitude, slavery or practices similar to slavery, debt bondage, or forced labor”. It is estimated that around 40.3 million victims are human trafficking victims globally, one in four of whom are children (International Labor Organization, 2020). So far, studies on the phenomenon of human trafficking reveal that is complex and driven by many interlinked and overlapping factors, such as poverty, geopolitical instability, gender dynamics, historical inequities and environmental degradation. However, the field of human trafficking research is still nascent, therefore there is an urgent need to develop scientific methods to collect reliable data of high quality to guide policy and programming interventions that combat human trafficking.
We Work as a Global Community Collective
Our Collective Impact approach engages the anti-human trafficking community around the world spanning multiple sectors including government authorities, legal bodies, civil society organizations and community-based organizations, who share a common agenda of working to eradicate human trafficking.
For our current Anti-Trafficking Research and Programming projects in West Africa, we are implementing projects to measure and reduce the prevalence of child trafficking in Guinea and Sierra Leone, and sex trafficking in southern Senegal. Our general strategy is for APRIES team to, firstly, collaborate with selected research partners to collect data that identify populations vulnerable to human trafficking (i.e. a target population). Then, we establish baseline estimates of human trafficking prevalence for our target population. This is followed by collaboration with selected implementing partners who will increase the capacity of community-engaged agencies to conduct effective anti-trafficking programs and policies. Finally, we measure the prevalence at the end of each project to generate “endline data”, and this data is compared to the baseline data to measure the impact of our interventions. We are mindful to ensure that as we implement our project activities, we prepare and empower each community partner to continue the work sustainably beyond the end of the project, in order to leave a lasting legacy of change.
In our Prevalence Reduction Innovation Forum (PRIF) project, we are currently working with six of the best anti-human trafficking research teams around the world to test different scientific approaches to measuring human trafficking prevalence in target populations in Brazil, Morocco, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Tunisia and Tanzania. Through such project-related activities, we are building a global community of researcher-learners in human trafficking prevalence research, where we compare and document the different methodological approaches to human trafficking research. Our research, programming and advocacy approaches are all oriented towards freeing, helping and protecting what are often hidden populations of trafficking victims, while bringing their traffickers to full justice.
We are Growing
APRIES has been rapidly growing, and in 2021 we will become a part of the Global Center on Innovation and Human Trafficking Research (IHTR) based at the University of Georgia. This expansion will help us to attract the best researchers, programmers, and policy experts globally to increase our investigative, legal and protective reach into the tragic and criminal world of human trafficking.
References
United States Department of State. 2020. Human Trafficking - United States Department of State. [Online] Available at: <https://www.state.gov/policy-issues/human-trafficking/> [Accessed 11 November 2020].
International Labor Organization. 2020. Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking). [Online] Available at: <https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm> [Accessed 11 November 2020].