Revealing the Complexity of Human Trafficking
Like many entrenched problems, the challenge with mitigating—or even studying—human trafficking is mapping and navigating its complexity. Forced prostitution, forced labor, forced begging, forced marriage, organ removal, and enlisting child soldiers are all forms of human trafficking.
NORC staff have developed strong reputations in the field of vulnerable population research and serve on counter-trafficking panels for forums hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, USAID, the Bureau of International Labor Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, and other stakeholders. We have a growing portfolio of work that is helping government and non-governmental organizations (NGO) better understand the scope of human trafficking and the social and economic forces that shape its many permutations.
"NORC’s work in health, education, and other varied sectors allows us to see how seemingly disparate parts of a problem fit together.”
We recently finished two companion projects for USAID’s Counter Trafficking in Persons initiative. One project explored the prevalence of various forms of human trafficking in Honduras and how those forms differed in terms of victim vulnerabilities, recruitment patterns, and servitude experiences; the study is being used to develop future programming. The other project explored whether a nationally representative survey in the Philippines could identify trafficking victims in sufficient numbers to determine national and regional prevalence.
The Honduran study targeted vulnerable populations receiving services from 24 local NGOs throughout Honduras. NORC trained social workers from these NGOs to administer the survey, and worked with them to develop a protocol for assisting respondents who might be “re-victimized” by participating in the survey. Though the sample wasn’t representative, the surveys provided a wealth of granular insights about the different forms of trafficking in Honduras and victims’ experiences.
With a sample size of 5,000, the Philippines study was much larger and more representative. While less granular than the Honduras study, the survey methods were rigorous and provided important information to guide follow-up studies.
Most surprisingly, both studies showed that most victims were trafficked within the country rather than taken to destinations outside the country, and that most trafficking was for labor rather than sexual exploitation.
In 2019, NORC began working with the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS) to estimate the prevalence of human trafficking in various industries across India and Bangladesh.
The effort comprises seven separate studies in three areas:
- Forced labor of Bangladeshi and Indian migrants in Gulf Cooperation Council countries
- Commercial sexual exploitation of children in select destination areas of India
- Forced labor in informal apparel factories in select districts of Bangladesh and India
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Interactive Portfolio of Work:
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