Are we doing enough to prevent human trafficking?

A new report from World Vision finds 61% of children and youth in Laos have never heard of human trafficking. They are unaware of the dangers of working in another country and of being tricked by brokers.

Dao* was only 15 when her mother asked her to leave her home near Savannakhet to travel to Thailand to find a job.

Dao agreed to do what her mother asked. Her stepfather contacted a friend who regularly sends workers to Thailand and four days later, he came to pick up Dao and took her to Thailand. He had found her a job as a domestic worker where he promised she would earn around 135 US dollars per month.

Dao's lived with a Thai family in a gated community and took care of their house, doing the cooking, cleaning and laundry. Whilst the children were kind, the parents were cruel and frequently yelled at Dao if she made any mistakes.

Her duties went far beyond domestic work. The owner of the gated community regularly forced Dao and the other Lao girls to work on construction sites. They were picked up at 5am and would often have to work until 8pm, carrying out tasks that were physically demanding.

They were expected to move heavy bags of concrete and to construct building frames and concrete floors. The work took its toll on Dao and she was often she was ill from the hard work but was never allowed to see a doctor.

Over the last 15 years, this type of story has been repeated over and over. Young people from Laos, Myanmar, 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 was startling about Laos.

The research revealed that many children and youth already know how to migrate safely. They know they should have their passports with them when they travel. Yet, many are not doing this.

The research also found that more Lao young people are migrating for work than their counterparts from Myanmar and Vietnam. In Laos, only half of children and youth who migrate for work consult their parents before making a decision to leave home to work in another country.

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 a 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 60,000 people from Laos migrated for work. While it may be lofty to dream of human trafficking ending, there are things that can be done to decrease the risk.

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 applying 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.

We realize there is a bigger need for programming work in Laos to raise basic awareness of human trafficking and how a young person can protect themselves if they decide to work in another country. While awareness alone is not enough to prevent trafficking in persons, it provides an important foundation that allows migrants to more accurately understand and weigh the risks they are facing and take protective actions where possible.

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

The Lao PDR government has a strong National Plan of Action To Combat Trafficking. This plan was approved in 2013 but there is limited budget to implementation. We have faith that once if it is implemented as plan, human trafficking will be prevented more often and survivors of trafficking will get improved reintegration services.

Laos also has a dynamic system for protecting children at the village level – through its Child Protection Network. However, the network is supported from international donors and does not cover the entire country.

For communities and for the public, increased understanding about the importance of education is crucial. Parents need to put their children’s education ahead of the desire to increase income after children finish primary school. Through the research study, we have learned the value of both formal and informal education – including child and youth clubs – ensures awareness of human trafficking and its main risks.

Like Dao, 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.

 *Name changed to protect identity