GRETA: Hope for Justice data and recommendations in anti-trafficking report

Hope for Justice has joined forces with anti-trafficking organisations across the UK to make a joint submission to the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA).

It is designed to help GRETA with how it monitors and supervises the UK’s implementation of ECAT, an important Anti-Trafficking Convention that applies to all members of the Council of Europe (the UK is still a member of the Council of Europe, which is not the same as the EU).

Drawing on Hope for Justice’s expertise, the report includes lots of our data, including a list of the groups of people who we have identified as being at risk of human trafficking and exploitation. Survivor testimonies from Operation Fort, thought to be the largest modern slavery case in European history, also feature within the report, including how Hope for Justice supported one of the survivors to enter the UK’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM) and to report his exploitation to the police.

In a section exploring alternatives to detention, the Independent Modern Slavery Advocate® (IMSA) Model is highlighted as good practice. The Detention Taskforce said the IMSA® work “would complement any alternative to the detention model”.

Further reference to our work includes Hope for Justice’s partnership with Intel in respect of the role that confidential computing could play in enabling better data-sharing while remaining compliant with confidentiality and data responsibilities, and our engagement with the UK Government on this project.

‘Backward steps’

For the response, we worked with the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group (ATMG) and 15 anti-trafficking organisations and, importantly, with people who have experienced trafficking.

Together, we speak into the measures that are being taken in this country to prevent and detect this crime and to support those who are vulnerable to human trafficking, as well as issues like prosecutions and new technologies.

In the document, we jointly highlight how the UK has “regrettably taken many steps back in tackling vulnerabilities to trafficking and modern slavery”.

We identify that the Government’s focus on immigration enforcement is the main barrier to developing a strong prevention response. It is also the main reason why identification and support mechanisms for survivors of modern slavery are weaker than they used to be. This is chiefly because of recent legislation: the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023.

Collectively, we argue that “the UK is…not only falling short of meeting its obligations under ECAT, but also proactively breaching many of its core principles”.

The report’s executive summary states: “We call on the new Government to abandon the focus on immigration enforcement and securitisation to ensure appropriate attention can be given to develop a robust prevention strategy to tackle modern slavery and trafficking. This can only be achieved if survivors are guaranteed access to identification and support according to their needs and ensure there are secure pathways for them to report their exploitation without the fear of being criminalised. We hope this submission provides useful tools to facilitate an evaluation round that will encourage the UK authorities into a more strategic, systematic, and robust implementation of their own anti-trafficking commitments and duties.”

Recommendations

As part of our submission, we made recommendations to ensure a more effective criminal justice response. We highlighted the need for more effective victim and witness protection (before, during and after criminal justice processes), considering the risks to survivors in providing testimony. We called for more resources for victim services.

We recommended that compensation for survivors of modern slavery is made easier. We want survivors to have accessible information, relevant to their language and cultural context, to enable them to decide whether they want legal advice on compensation (and if they want to seek compensation at all). We also call for independent advocacy and support to help survivors continue engaging with the compensation scheme, which can be a complex and lengthy process.

The full list of contributors to the report is as follows: