Monthly Archives: March 2025

Supporting children of trafficking victims. A reintegration guide for practitioners (2022)

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To date, little attention has been paid to the reintegration of children of trafficking victims. These children – those who were left behind, those who were trafficked with their parent(s) and those born from a trafficking situation – face serious and diverse challenges, not only while their parent is trafficked, but also after trafficking ends and their recovery and reintegration is underway. Equally, service providers face a range of constraints in effectively supporting the safety, well-being, and long-term reintegration of these children, not least given the complexity and diversity of their assistance needs. Based on the experiences of trafficking victims and reintegration practitioners in Albania, this reintegration guide offers an enhanced understanding of the experiences and needs of children of trafficking victims, to effectively and appropriately support the inclusion of these children into their families and communities and to ensure their access to the rights and opportunities that they are entitled to and which are vital for their healthy development. It offers guidance and suggestions for reintegration practitioners to support them in their daily work with children of trafficking victims and their families.

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Available in Albanian

Mentoring of victims of trafficking. A reintegration guide for practitioners (2022)

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Recovery and reintegration after trafficking is a taxing and complicated process that involves significant challenges for victims, as well as their family members. Service providers play an important and sometimes lifesaving role in supporting recovery and reintegration. This includes mentors who provide trafficking victims with emotional and social support, serve as a positive role model and an example of a healthy, and supportive relationship. Mentors also work with trafficking victims to build their trust, confidence, and self-esteem. This reintegration guide equips practitioners with information about mentoring trafficking victims during their recovery and reintegration. The guide begins with an overview of recovery and reintegration after a trafficking experience. It then goes on to explain the mentoring model and the role of mentors in supporting recovery and reintegration. It also explains how to establish mentoring relationships, different stages in the mentoring process, and challenges faced in mentoring. The guide concludes with guidance for mentors and reintegration practitioners when employing a mentoring model to support trafficking victim reintegration.

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Available in Albanian

Trafficking Victim Protection Frameworks in Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Viet Nam: A Resource for Practitioners (2020)

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Victim protection – the identification, referral, assistance, and reintegration of trafficking victims – is a core component of a comprehensive response to trafficking in persons. Protection offers critical interventions to end trafficking exploitation as well as to support and assist victims to recover after their experiences, and to reintegrate into their families, communities, and wider society. While international obligations to protect victims of human trafficking are the same for all countries, the way these obligations are pursued and fulfilled differs widely. Most countries outline their protection frameworks in a series of laws and policy documents, supplemented by standard operating procedures (SOPs) and other mechanisms to give them effect. Locating the various components of protection frameworks, and understanding how they fit together, can be a daunting and time-consuming task. This publication provides an overview of the legal and policy framework in place for the protection of trafficking victims in five countries in Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Viet Nam). This resource is for anti-trafficking practitioners who are working to understand, implement, or improve instruments and procedures for identification, referral, and assistance of trafficking victims. It may serve as a road map of what protection opportunities are provided for in law, policy, and procedures, as well as materials that support their implementation.

Identifying Trafficking Victims: An Analysis of Victim Identification Tools and Resources in Asia (2020)

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Victim identification is the process by which an individual is identified as a victim of trafficking in persons, which in turn, entitles them to rights and protections. Formal identification should lead to and facilitate the opportunity for a victim to be referred for consultation or further action, including voluntary access to assistance and reintegration services and/or access to justice. This review is a first step in understanding the victim identification tools and resources that currently exist and are publicly available to support the identification and referral of trafficking victims, with a focus on the countries of Asia. This review provides an initial exploration of what victim identification may look like in different situations and scenarios (including formal identification, informal identification, self-identification and non-identification) and describes the current state of publicly available victim identification tools and resources globally. The review then narrows its focus to examine victim identification tools and resources available in different regions of Asia, exploring the purpose of the different tools and resources; intended users; the target audience (what forms of trafficking and profiles of victims are being identified); at what stage of the trafficking cycle identification is taking place; and how the tools and resources were developed. The review concludes with a set of actionable recommendations for additional tools and resources to fill existing gaps and enhance victim identification efforts in Asia.

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A Review of TIP Research in the Mekong Region (2008-2018) (2019)

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NEXUS Institute conducted a review of TIP research from 2008 to 2018 in and from five of the countries in the Mekong region (Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam), to provide an overview of existing research and research and to inform the USAID Asia CTIP project. This brief summarizes the key findings of this TIP research review (Quality and Rigor in TIP Research in the Mekong Region: Assessing the Evidence Base and Exploring the Evidence: A Review of Research on TIP for Agriculture, Construction and Domestic Work in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam).

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Identifying Trafficked Migrants and Refugees Along the Balkan Route. Exploring the Boundaries of Exploitation, Vulnerability and Risk (2019)

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This article explores what we can learn about the identification of and assistance to trafficked persons from practitioners in Serbia on the front line of Europe’s “refugee crisis”. Questions arise as to whether and to what extent the anti-trafficking framework is effective in offering protection to trafficked migrants/refugees in a mass migration setting, but also what is lost if the specific perspective of the anti-trafficking framework is set aside or given lower priority. It is important to discuss who is included and who is excluded; whether protection and assistance meet people’s needs; and whether or how the existing framework can be used to greater effect. While it was challenging to operationalize the anti-trafficking framework, both conceptually and practically, during the “refugee crisis” in the Balkans, it remains an important approach that should have been mobilized to a greater extent, both to secure individual protections and rights and to gather information about human trafficking in conflict and crisis, which, in turn, increases the ability to respond effectively.

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Feeling a Failure: Returning Home a ‘Trafficked’ Man in Indonesia (2019)

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Large numbers of Indonesian men migrate each year for work in construction, factories, agriculture, on plantations and on fishing boats. Many end up exploited in ways that constitute human trafficking, suffering violence, deprivation, restricted freedom and severe exploitation as well as long periods of separation from their families. Being able to escape and return home was a turning point in these men’s lives. And yet reintegrating into their families after trafficking was not uncomplicated. While many family problems were caused by economics, tensions also resulted from long separations, fractured relationships, and frustration over ‘failed’ migration and unfulfilled expectations. Understanding the nature of and reasons for the problems men face after trafficking is key in designing and implementing programs and policies for trafficked men to recover and reintegrate, however, experiences of long-term reintegration, particularly men’s experiences, are largely missing from research on human trafficking. This research with trafficked Indonesian men, 49 of whom were interviewed in the lead-up to this article, is designed to help fill this gap.

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Identification of Trafficking Victims in Europe and the Former Soviet Union (2019)

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The identification of trafficking victims continues to be a challenge in anti-trafficking work. There are many ways that victims exit trafficking and encounter anti-trafficking practitioners. Victim identification may take place in different settings, under different conditions and at different stages of a victim’s trafficking and post-trafficking life. Nevertheless, many victims go unidentified and are consequently subject to continued exploitation, sometimes for extended periods of time. Based on the experiences of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labor and begging or delinquency, this chapter discusses how victim identification does and does not take place in various settings and the reasons why victims may go unidentified. Barriers to victim identification include both personal barriers, linked to decisions of trafficking victims themselves, as well as structural barriers linked to the institutional anti-trafficking response of a specific country. The chapter is based on research with trafficking victims, service providers and criminal justice actors in several countries in Europe (Albania, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Italy, Norway, Romania, Serbia) and the former Soviet Union (Moldova and Ukraine).

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