Advancing Equity Through Collaboration: Human Trafficking and Sexual Assault

Date

09/07/2022 01:00 PM - 03:00 PM PST

Location

Host(s)

Marsela Rojas (she/her) Project Manager, Claudia Sibaja (she/her), Project Coordinator, Shelby Phillips (she/her), Project Coordinator, VALOR

Presenter(s)

Leigh LaChapelle (they/them) Associate Director of Survivor Advocacy, Chris Ash (they/them) Survivor Leadership, Program Manager, CAST

Description

Since the 2000 passing of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), many organizations who previously had little or no interest in forced labor and who had otherwise held no anti-oppression principles realized the value of the anti-trafficking momentum to further their own agendas. Because of this, many anti-trafficking organizations claiming values of survivor-centered, trauma-informed, and empowerment-based programming engaged in coercive intervention and other strategies that did not center the consent and bodily autonomy of survivors. Additionally, many components of these strategies rely on policing tactics that place people from marginalized communities (including trans people, immigrants, and BIPOC) at increased risk of harm through engagement with the criminal justice system, target vulnerable sex workers, and do not address the root causes that leave people in the sex trades without access to safety and support.

“End Demand” has been a popular part of the anti-trafficking narrative since it’s early days, and “Demand Reduction” prioritized as a “prevention” strategy. Meanwhile, demand reduction has been criticized by labor rights organizers as antithetical to the labor organizing practices that can keep workers safe (working together, increased screening, organizing for safety), and by anti-trafficking advocates for its incongruence with what is shown to reduce exploitation in other forms of labor. This presentation will contextualize the framing of shared values and collaborations between SA and HT organizations, within the history of the passing of the TVPA. It will then offer profiles for seven common typologies of engagement, with concrete strategies for how to engage with each to further a human rights, harm reduction approach.

Resources

Attacking Demand, Escalating Violence: The Impact of Twenty Years of End Demand Implementation on People who Trade Sex

Community Tool Box: Precede/Proceed

Learning Objectives

Review how the history of the human trafficking movement and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act has led to the criminalization and coercive intervention of survivors and how that intersects with the sexual violence movement.
Learn how the public health model of violence prevention includes risk and protective factors that can be predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing, and can also be behavioral, attitude, or environmental, and why a focus on demand reduction detracts from a comprehensive public health prevention approach.
Identify concrete strategies to engage with different typologies of anti-trafficking advocates in dialogues about equity to increase effective collaboration between the anti-trafficking and sexual violence movements.