12 January 2016 – The critical issue of human trafficking in the fishing industry was highlighted by NEXUS Senior Researcher Rebecca Surtees in a SciDevNet article about data-driven approaches to combat human trafficking in the fishing industry. The article focused on the recent meeting of experts led by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Oslo, Norway to tackle labor exploitation in the fishing sector (25-26 November 2015). Rebecca Surtees, a leader in research in the issue was among the experts who spoke at the meeting.

“Trafficking is, by its very nature, criminal and hidden, which makes it very difficult to research and estimate…Regardless of the scale, we do know that it is happening in many countries and affecting a significant number of fishers,” she says. “Understanding the nature of this exploitation and their impacts is the key to designing programs and policies that can both prevent trafficking of fishers and protect those who have already been exploited”.