Op-Ed: Have millions collectively spent on anti-trafficking prevention been effective?

Phyu was 17 when she left school and decided to leave her home in Mandalay, Myanmar. She wanted to contribute to the family’s income after her father became too ill to work. A broker persuaded Phyu to work in China. She was told that she could get a good job as a sales girl or as an accountant.

When she arrived, Phyu was sold for 20,000 Chinese Yuan (USD3,200). She was forced to become a bride of a Chinese man.

Phyu tried to get help to leave. She called the broker to ask to go home. She was met with violence, beaten until she was unconscious while her new husband watched.

An alert neighbour reported the abuse to the police. The officers eventually found her, hands tied, blindfolded, with a cloth in her mouth, hidden under the floor of the house.

Young people are forced into jobs they didn’t want or sign up for. In these jobs, they face violence, extremely difficult working conditions and exploitation.

Over the last 15 years, this type of story has been repeated over and over. Young people from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam continue to be convinced to work in richer countries. When they arrive, the jobs promised to them never materialize. Instead, young people are forced into jobs they didn’t want or didn’t sign up for. In these jobs, they face violence, extremely difficult working conditions and exploitation.

It’s a sad admission that the problem hasn’t ended, despite the millions of dollars that have been poured into anti-trafficking work in the Greater Mekong Sub-region for well over a decade.

So what has been working?

Unfortunately, it’s hard to say. To date there has been no substantial evidence to demonstrate the impact of the collective effort of prevention work on anti-trafficking. The approach, to date, to stop human trafficking has been mostly built on assumptions.

With this in mind, World Vision undertook a rigorous quantitative survey to find answers, test our approach, and to build the much-needed evidence to guide future prevention work. Our anti-trafficking teams in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, with the technical support of a leading international research university, interviewed 10,000 children, youth and adults to find out why children and young people continue to be at risk of human trafficking.

What this research study revealed is that the majority of children and youth already know how to migrate safely. They know they should have their passports or national identity cards with them when they travel. Yet, many are not doing this. For instance, only 37% of Cambodian children and youth migrated with the proper identity documents and even fewer left copies of these identity documents at home with their family members.

The research also found that more Lao and Cambodian young people are migrating for work than their counterparts from Myanmar and Vietnam. These young people in Lao and Cambodia are unlikely to consult their parents before making a decision to work in another country.

For many young people migrating for work, money is what matters. If young people can send money home, they’ve succeeded in their mission; the negative experiences they endure are collateral damage.

Young people were also aware of the negative experiences that could be associated to migrating for work. In fact, more than a third of all children and youth that had previously migrated for work said that they had endured at least one of the following negative experiences – excessive working hours, debt used as form of control by the employer, withholding of wages by the employer, physical or mental abuse, or dangerous working conditions. Among Lao children and youth, 2 out of 3 that migrated had endured at least one of these negative experiences.

Yet despite these findings, surprisingly, the majority of children and youth were able to send money to their families back home. And herein lies the key motivating factor. For many young people migrating for work, money is what matters. If young people can send money home, they’ve succeeded in their mission; the negative experiences they endure are collateral damage.

With the Asian Development Bank reporting the gap between rich and poor continuing to expand in the Greater Mekong Region, the poor are getting more desperate to find better work opportunities –whether at home or abroad. What’s more, immigration restrictions in this region make it hard for low skilled workers to migrate legally for work. And while good anti-trafficking laws do exist across the region; sadly they are not applied everywhere or are not adequately enforced or resourced, so that children and youth are not adequately protected.

In 2013, the International Organization for Migration estimated that 3 to 5 million people in the Greater Mekong Region migrate for work. While it may be lofty to dream of human trafficking ending, there are things that can be done to decrease the risk.

Our team in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar work with thousands of young people to ensure the region’s youth know how to apply for and protect proper travel and work documents.

In World Vision’s regional anti-trafficking work, we’ve moved from trying to scare young people about the dangers of trafficking into empowering them with knowledge about ways to stay safe if they decide to migrate. Our team in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar work with thousands of young people to ensure the region’s youth know how to apply for and protect proper travel and work documents. We help youth identify potentially risky work opportunities. We advise young people to know at least one trustworthy companion during the journey and at their destination and make sure they know who to call for help.

This research study shows us that this approach is working.

But it also tells us that we as anti-trafficking community need to take a wider lens to this issue by addressing greater societal gaps and economic inequalities.

And for this - we know that organizations cannot act alone.

Governments should provide systems that provide passports and work permits at a low cost and in a timely manner. With this in place, more young people will be able to access documents that can protect them and allow them to work legally in destination countries. Countries who receive migrants should also have the ability to count all workers, regardless of citizenship, and ensure that labour rights are extended to everyone.

For communities and for the public, there is a moral responsibility to ensure that all people are treated with dignity. Our research found that migrants were often blamed as the cause of social problems. And yet, nearly one in four Thai survey respondents in the Thai-Myanmar border areas had seen an employer put a migrant child to work in conditions they thought was “dangerous”. What’s more, one in five Thais along the Thai-Myanmar and Thai-Cambodia border areas knew of an employer that made migrants work for more than 12 hours a day.  However, only one out of ten Thais that saw or knew of these exploitative practices actually reported it. This must change.

Like Phyu, we all want to improve our living conditions. But for those with very limited options, many will continue to take the risk of unsafe migration despite the potential of harm. The responsibility to protect migrant workers and their family members from exploitation must be shared by governments, civil society organisations and citizens. We need to address the underlying structures that perpetuate and allow exploitation. We need to do better.

 Learn more about the World Vision End Trafficking in Persons Programme