The coronavirus is not only claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, but is also causing a global economic crisis that is expected to rival or exceed that of any recession in the past 150 years. Although decisive action and containment measures are helping flatten the curve of infection, such measures inevitably deepen and lengthen the economic recession.
Poverty, lack of social or economic opportunity and limited labour protections are the main root causes and drivers that render people vulnerable or cause them to fall victim to human trafficking. This unprecedented crisis will likely exacerbate all of those factors and result in developments (see Figure 1) that must be noted by anti-human-trafficking communities and stakeholders.
Figure 1. Impact of the coronavirus on human trafficking
As we have seen from previous economic crises and epidemics (such as SARS and Ebola), accurate, consistent and timely information is essential in order to fight not only the coronavirus but also the consequences it has on human-trafficking situations. In researching this brief, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) has spoken to its Network of Experts and Resilience Fund grantees who are directly fighting human trafficking in the field, and used inputs provided by our various anti-trafficking networks, contacts and projects, including the Alliance 8.7’s Communications, Engagement and Advocacy Group, Freedom Collaborative COVID-19 Response platform and the Human Trafficking Foundation Google group. The brief has also drawn on the initial findings of the COVID-19 Impact survey conducted by the Tech Against Trafficking initiative – a coalition of global tech companies, human-trafficking survivors, civil-society organizations and international institutions in which GI-TOC serves as the research lead.
Coronavirus-induced supply-demand dynamics
This brief aims to contribute to global anti-trafficking efforts aimed at mitigating the effects of the pandemic on human-trafficking situations and actors, not only by providing timely, comprehensive overview and transparent information, but also by suggesting holistic and multi-stakeholder responses and interventions.
Aggravating circumstances: How coronavirus impacts human trafficking - GI-TOC, 2020DOWNLOAD
A growing number of global brands and retailers are adopting ethical recruitment policies stipulating, among other things, that all costs and fees related to labour recruitment are paid by the employer and not by the workers being recruited. Employe...Read More
Developed by UNICEF, the UN Global Compact and Save the Children – the Children’s Rights and Business Principles are the first comprehensive set of principles to guide companies on the full range of actions they can take in the workplace, marke...Read More
The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the sites for anti-trafficking education and the range of educators who shape how the public and institutions understand and respond to human trafficking.
The aim of this Special Issue of Anti-Traff...Read More
The research described in this report set out to build a better understanding of the scale of child sexual abuse (CSA) encountered by local authority children’s services in Wales, and to explore how concerns regarding CSA are identified, recorded ...Read More