Fact Sheet Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research Washington, DC November 14, 2005 Seminar on Trafficking in Persons Research
On November 14, 2005, experts in human trafficking research from several international organizations, NGOs, universities, and government agencies gathered at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for a one-day seminar on human trafficking research. Some of the highlights and key themes of the seminar were as follows: Existing Data and Methodologies: In recent years, increased attention on the issue of human trafficking has led to a corresponding growth in the number of publications and research studies on trafficking. Several organizations represented at the seminar have undertaken large-scale research projects on human trafficking: Methodological challenges: Seminar participants discussed some of the challenges in current trafficking research methodologies. Many large-scope research projects rely on open source data (i.e., data generally available to the public in government, NGO, academic, or media reports), which can be problematic due to the scarcity or unreliability of sources in some countries. Also, different sources use different definitions of trafficking, which make it difficult to compare data across sources. Finally, developed countries tend to be overrepresented because they publish more on the subject of trafficking, and certain forms of trafficking—labor trafficking, trafficking in men, internal trafficking, or trafficking between developing countries—tend to be underrepresented because they receive less attention than others. Data gaps: Seminar participants also identified several areas where trafficking data are particularly lacking: Measuring Success: Finally, participants wrestled with the question of how to measure the success of global, regional, and local anti-trafficking efforts. One method for measuring success assumes that the causes of trafficking are well-understood, and then seeks to measure a variety of indicators (such as the existence of a legal system that functions on behalf of trafficking victims, or the existence of economic opportunities for potential trafficking victims) to determine whether those causes are being addressed. However, measuring anti-trafficking success remains one of the most problematic and least well-developed areas of human trafficking research. 1 Double sampling, or "capture–recapture," is a statistical method for estimating elusive populations in which researchers draw two independent, random samples from the target population and then estimate the size of the population based on the overlap between the two samples. |