This post was written as part of my role as Marketing and Campaigns Specialist at Hope for Justice. View the full piece here.
Women make up nearly 27 million of all those living in modern slavery. That includes 14.9 million girls in forced marriages and 11.8 million women trapped in forced labour.
Women and children are disproportionately represented among those caught in modern slavery. Even after they are free from exploitation, women can face gender-specific challenges such as pregnancies resulting from exploitation, childcare costs, gender-based violence, FGM and societal stigma.
It is common for women and girls to experience some form of sexual violence while in exploitation, with 91% of victims of sexual exploitation being women. The 2022 Trafficking In Persons report found that women and girls are three times more likely than men to suffer from extreme violence at the hands of traffickers.
Recovery from a trafficking experience is not easy, and there are many barriers that can make it harder for a survivor to re-enter society. These barriers can include difficulty accessing safe housing, overcoming trauma and mental health struggles, limited work opportunities, and having to navigate stigma and exclusion.
For International Women’s Day 2024, we wanted to further understand the risks and barriers that women and girls face after exploitation, so we interviewed our colleagues on the ground in Ethiopia, Uganda, the United States and the United Kingdom about the specific barriers to re-entering society that they have found when working with survivors of modern slavery.
Read these individual stories to learn more about our work in each country:
From interviewing our program specialists, we’ve been able to delve into the barriers that exist for survivors of modern slavery, and especially those that exist for women and girls.
These are our recommendations for governments, civil society and the wider public to help ensure survivors get the appropriate care and support they deserve when navigating life after exploitation and overcoming the barriers that exist for re-entering society:
Training: Local authorities and community services must have accurate human trafficking and modern slavery awareness training. Learn more about our training provided here.
Education & Employment: Close the current awareness gap on trafficking in the education sector, and ensure that more women and girls have access to vocational training. Give more children access to school and more access to opportunities. Provide small business training and financial training for women in the community.
Funding: Provide consistent and sustainable funding for short and long-term support services.
Health Access: Ensure survivors can access free or easily affordable healthcare (mental and physical) that is suitable for their needs. It must be trauma-informed and stigma-free.Â
Financial Security: Ensure survivors have easier access to good-quality jobs, training and financial support.
Community Awareness: Children’s rights, parent’s responsibilities, and women’s equality issues need to be prioritised. Educating local communities on these rights, as well as human trafficking awareness, will reduce the risk of re-exploitation.
Community Support: Create a safe environment where survivors can be around people of the same age, nationality, experience, those who have similar interests, etc. This can aid comfort levels and help to remove the heaviness of what has happened to them.
Independent Advocacy: Learn more about our IMSA model here.
Implementing and securing these improvements will help us to come together to eliminate the barriers so that survivors of modern slavery have a clearer path after exploitation.