The Power of Partnerships to Overcome Otherness to Prevent Human Trafficking

New research from CenHTRO — The Critical Role of the 4th “P”: Addressing the Impact of “Otherness” on Human Trafficking Prevention E?orts, published in the Journal of Human Trafficking — describes how a sense of otherness impacts anti-trafficking efforts and points to the power of partnership for creating effective prevention programs.?

Can NGOs do a better job of mobilizing communities to stop trafficking? Absolutely.

Efforts to counter human trafficking? are often framed around the 4P paradigm — prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnership.?

Preventing human trafficking is widely seen as a matter of raising awareness, usually through cost-effective advertising or social media campaigns.?

But a review of existing research shows that while raising awareness can increase people’s knowledge about the problem, it doesn’t necessarily result in direct actions being taken to stop human trafficking.?

This could be the result of ‘otherness.’

What is “otherness”?

It’s the belief that human trafficking is a problem for other people or other communities, but not one’s own.?

Even in regions with high trafficking prevalence, research shows that people can be hesitant to recognize or accept the problem right in front of them.?

In the eyes of ‘otherness,’ human trafficking is an individual's problem, not the community’s, so why should they intervene?

‘Otherness’ can appear due to outsider intervention.

International NGOs conducting awareness raising campaigns have good intentions but may inadvertently make at-risk communities feel judged by promoting messaging which may be perceived as placing blame for exploitation on communities targeted for intervention.People may not want to admit that trafficking is a problem out of a sense of distrust of outsiders. This power imbalance intensifies that sense of otherness.?

Awareness campaigns can also rely on oversimplification or sensationalized descriptions of human trafficking, which can make communities, especially survivors, feel excluded, disconnected, or otherwise uninterested in playing a role in stopping trafficking.

But these issues can be fixed.

From ‘Other’ to ‘Partner’

In our new paper, CenHTRO suggests that prevention efforts should elevate the 4th P — partnership — to include community members in both defining the problem and designing the intervention.? This means survivors, their families, and communities should be meaningfully involved in defining what human trafficking is and how it should be addressed.

By working in concert with anti-trafficking organizations, community members can gain ownership of the issue and help outsiders identify realistic ways to develop and deliver counter-trafficking programs.?

‘Otherness’ often results from a power imbalance, from an unequal relationship between at-risk people and well-meaning outsiders.?

‘Partnership’ is built on power sharing, elevating the expertise of often marginalized people to shape how their own community responds to problems.?

Partnership can overcome otherness. And empowered communities can stop human trafficking.?

?? https://bit.ly/OthernessCenHTRO?— Full article

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Authors: Anna Cody, Rebecca Poon, Tamora Callands, David Okech, Lydia Aletraris, Bart Robertson

The research described in this article was funded by the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.? The opinions, findings, and conclusions therein are those of the author[s] and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State.