To mark International Women’s Day, we have interviewed our teams on the ground in Ethiopia, Uganda, the United States and the United Kingdom to find out about the specific barriers that women and girls face to re-entering society after being exploited. 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.
- 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.
Learn more about what you can do to help: https://hopeforjustice.org/get-involved/
