Escape or exit from trafficking is a critical moment in the lives of trafficked persons. It is, in many ways, a new beginning or a return to normal life. But “being home” is far from an easy or smooth transition. It is, often times, a complex, taxing and complicated process that involves significant challenges. The process of reintegration encompasses not only individual trafficking victims but also their family members and the family environment to which they return. Trafficked persons must recover and come to terms not only with their own exploitation, but also the reactions and responses of their family members. Moreover, the family of trafficked persons have also been negatively affected by the victim’s trafficking and must also navigate and manage return and reintegration. In many situations, exit from trafficking is the beginning of another set of challenges – at a personal level and within the family. And yet too little is known about the issues that trafficked persons and their families face in the process of reintegration. This chapter seeks to widen the lens, to include the actions and reactions of individual trafficking victims and their families, including the interplay of the two and how this changes over time. Based on fieldwork conducted in Indonesia from 2014 to 2016, this chapter explores multi-layered tensions, complications and challenges that Indonesian trafficking victims and their family members face in reintegrating after a trafficking experience. It considers in particular the challenges faced by Indonesian women trafficked as domestic workers as they reunite with their families, including financial problems resulting from or exacerbated by trafficking; tensions and conflict due to stress or distress; feelings of shame or being blamed; and damage to family relationships. Identifying, disentangling and understanding common points of tension and complication is a valuable starting point for improved reintegration programs and policies.
Category Archives: Assistance & Reintegration
Declining Assistance. Understanding Trafficked Persons’ Decisions, Choices and Resiliency (2017)
Reintegration assistance is often critical for trafficked persons as they recover and move on from trafficking. Well-designed reintegration and assistance programs can provide vital, even life-saving services to trafficked persons and their families facing the challenging task of rebuilding their lives. Such programs also address the pre-existing vulnerabilities that often contributed to individuals being trafficked and widen the life choices available to them. Nonetheless, some trafficking victims decline assistance and support after trafficking, choosing instead to try to cope on their own. Knowing why some victims do and do not decline assistance tells us a great deal about the condition of people’s lives after trafficking, what challenges they face and what opportunities are available to them. Based on fieldwork in the Balkans in 2006, this chapter discusses three broad reasons for trafficking victims to decline assistance: 1) linked to personal circumstances; 2) difficulties in the assistance system; and 3) issues of trust and victim identity.
Moving On. Family and Community Reintegration Among Indonesian Trafficking Victims (2017)
For many trafficking victims, exit or escape from trafficking is only the beginning of another set of challenges that they face as they seek to recover and reintegrate after a trafficking experience. Not only do they need to come to terms with their exploitation, but they must also navigate the often-complex relationships with family and community after trafficking. Indeed, reintegration takes place within a wide social field – involving different family members and varying community environments. Men and women also experience reintegration differently, as do victims of different forms of exploitation, including those trafficked for sexual exploitation, domestic work, fishing, construction, factory work and plantation work. It is, therefore, important to disentangle the actions and reactions of different family and community members, each of whom may play a different role in either supporting or undermining a victim’s reintegration. This paper explores the challenges faced by trafficked persons as they seek to reintegrate into their families and communities. The paper equally considers settings in which reintegration success is supported and galvanized by family and community members, to identify what can be done to enhance the reintegration outcomes of all Indonesian trafficking victims.
Available as a compressed pdf for mobile or slower Internet connection
Available in Bahasa Indonesian
Summary Report (available in Bahasa Indonesian)
Our Lives. Vulnerability and Resilience Among Indonesian Trafficking Victims (2017)
When trafficked persons escape their exploitation, it is often only the beginning of a complex and taxing process of recovery and reintegration. Trafficked persons must recover from the very serious and debilitating effects of trafficking exploitation. They often have a range of short- and long-term assistance needs, which are directly related to and often caused by their trafficking experiences, including issues related to housing and accommodation, physical and mental health, their economic situations, education and training, safety and security, legal status, legal issues and needs within the family. In addition, human trafficking is often a function of broader, structural inequality and individual vulnerability. This means that trafficked persons must also navigate and tackle underlying and pre-existing vulnerabilities that contributed to being trafficked and which also have the potential to undermine reintegration. This paper discusses what Indonesian trafficked persons have identified as their issues, vulnerabilities and resiliencies at different stages of their lives – before trafficking, as a consequence of trafficking exploitation and over the course of their recovery and reintegration. The paper also explores how vulnerability and resilience are influenced by external factors like the family and community setting into which trafficked persons seek to reintegrate and how vulnerability and resilience may fluctuate and change over time.
Available as a compressed pdf for mobile or slower Internet connection
Available in Bahasa Indonesian
Summary Report (available in Bahasa Indonesian)
Supporting the Reintegration of Trafficked Persons. A Guidebook for the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (2017)
This guidebook is based on findings from the ground-breaking study: After trafficking: Experiences and challenges in the (re)integration of trafficked persons in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, which is based on interviews with 252 trafficking victims in the GMS about their experiences of reintegration. The guidebook highlights positive examples and successes in the reintegration of trafficked persons in different settings and countries throughout the region. It also presents challenges faced by trafficked persons as they sought to move on from their exploitation, including what they suggested could be done in the future to better support the recovery and reintegration of trafficked persons. As critically, the guidebook offers a set of checklists which point to ways forward to improve work in the field of reintegration programming and policy. The guidebook is a practical resource for service providers in the GMS region (and further afield), to assist in improving reintegration programs and policies for trafficking victims. It may also be useful for donors and policymakers in terms of identifying and funding good practice in the field of reintegration of trafficking victims.
Available in Khmer, Laotian, Vietnamese, and Thai
What’s Home? (Re)integrating Children Born of Trafficking (2016)
A commonly overlooked group of victims of human trafficking are children who are born from and into trafficking situations. Some children are born to mothers trafficked for sexual exploitation (fathered by a trafficker or client); others are born to trafficked mothers who were bought by a “husband.” These children are exposed, from birth, to the violence and violations that constitute human trafficking and are deprived of basic needs for their physical and mental development. Moreover, they witness the on-going abuse and exploitation of their mothers. They are also exposed to a range of challenges and complications when they leave trafficking and make their way “home” with their mothers. To date, little attention has been paid to these children in research or in programmatic or policy responses. Yet these children face serious challenges, not only while living in exploitative situations, but also after trafficking, when they return “home” and integrate into their mothers’ families, communities and countries. Equally, service providers face a range of constraints in effectively supporting the safety, well-being and long term integration of these children. This paper focuses on the tensions, complications, and challenges that children born of trafficking and their mothers face in the integration process and how these inhibit their successful and sustainable (re)integration. Drawing on interviews with trafficked persons and anti-trafficking professionals from Southeastern Europe (SEE), this article discusses four levels at which integration takes place: 1) in the child’s relations with the trafficked mother; 2) in family relationships; 3) in community interactions; and 4) in the formal society into which they integrate. The article explores challenges as well as possible opportunities for integration of children born of trafficking. An enhanced understanding is needed about the particular challenges that these children and their mothers face after trafficking to effectively and appropriately support the inclusion of these children into their families, communities, and countries and to ensure their access to the rights and opportunities that they are entitled to and which are vital for their healthy development. Greater focus is also needed on children born of trafficking in their own right, in terms of their own specific needs and victim status, rather than being treated as attached or appendices of their trafficked mothers.
Going Home. Challenges in the Reintegration of Trafficking Victims in Indonesia (2016)
Overall, there exists a range of laws, policies and programs currently in place in Indonesia aimed at supporting the reintegration of trafficked persons. These include efforts and initiatives by various government ministries and departments (at the national, provincial and district levels), NGOs and IOs. These initiatives and interventions afford often-critical support and services to many trafficked persons toward their recovery and reintegration after trafficking exploitation. Nonetheless, within Indonesia, many trafficking victims do not receive the assistance and support that they need to recover from their trafficking experiences and reintegrate into their families and communities. And those that do receive assistance do not always receive assistance that is suited to their needs or adequately supports their efforts to reintegrate. This is because there are some critical challenges in the current response in Indonesia, including that many trafficked persons are unidentified; reintegration is not clearly defined or understood; most assistance is “one-off” support; assistance programs are only short-term; victims face barriers in accessing available services; lack of information about reintegration assistance; lack of reintegration assistance to trafficked men; lack of case management and tailored reintegration support; and an uneven provision of assistance due to decentralization and the geographic distribution of services. This paper is intended as a starting point in better understanding how reintegration of trafficked persons currently takes place in Indonesia, including what is working well and what constitute constraints and obstacles for trafficked persons to the reintegration process.
Available as a compressed pdf for mobile or slower Internet connection
Available in Bahasa Indonesian
Executive Summary (available in Bahasa Indonesian)
Directory of Services for Indonesian Trafficking Victims and Exploited Migrant Workers (2016)
This Directory provides concrete information to trafficked persons and exploited migrant workers about the services available to them, which can support their recovery and reintegration. It is intended as a tool to improve trafficking victims’ access to information about services and how to receive these services. The Directory covers government and NGO services in Jakarta and seven districts in West Java. The information is provided in simple, comprehensible language and a visually accessible format to ensure comprehension of information across age, language capacity and level of education.
Available in Bahasa Indonesian
Foreword from Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection
Beyond Trafficking. The Re/integration of Trafficking Victims in the Balkans, 2007 to 2014 (2015)
This report presents the results and impact of the Trafficking Victims Re/integration Programme (TVRP) in the lives of trafficked persons, as well as in the field of reintegration in the Balkans. It provides a detailed analysis of the outcomes and impact of the TVRP, which ran from 2007-2014, based on interviews with trafficking victims, partner NGOs, experts and government officials and other sources of data.
Power Point Presentation: Lessons from the TVRP 2007-2014
Power Point Presentation: What is reintegration? And why is it important?
Life Beyond Trafficking, The Re/integration of Trafficked Persons in the Balkans 2007-2014 (2015)
This report summarizes the main findings of the final TVRP evaluation conducted by NEXUS Institute in 2015. It presents the results and impact of the TVRP in the lives of trafficked persons in the Balkans as well as the results and impact of the TVRP in the field of reintegration.
Available in Albanian, Serbian and Macedonian
Power Point Presentation – Power Point Presentation in Albanian
Power Point Presentation in Macedonian – Power Point Presentation in Serbian