New Collaboration! We Name It So We Can Repair It: Rethinking Harm, Accountability, and Repair in the Anti-Trafficking Sector

April 14, 2023   |   Category: Resources

People can do good, be good, and still cause harm. Similarly, the anti-trafficking sector can engage in powerful advocacy, support many essential initiatives, provide many victims of human trafficking with essential services and support, and still cause harm– both to the recipients of their services and to the survivors who work in its initiatives. In order to stop causing this harm, we must first understand these actions and many others as harm, fully acknowledge the harm, commit to making repairs, and change our approaches.

This report articulates the findings of a months-long working group of experienced anti-trafficking leaders with lived experience, most of whom also mentor newer leaders and help them navigate challenging situations. It outlines kinds of harm survivors experience within the anti-trafficking sector, explains an approach to harm and repair, and offers concrete recommendations for funders, organizations, and survivors working in the sector.

View the executive summary: We Name It So We Can Repair It: Rethinking Harm, Accountability, and Repair in the Anti-trafficking Sector (executive summary)

View the full report: We Name It So We Can Repair It: Rethinking Harm, Accountability, and Repair in the Anti-trafficking Sector (full report)

Basics of Harm and Repair with Sophie Otiende and Chris Ash (Video): Basics of Harm and Repair

View our YouTube playlist about Community Accountability: Community Accountability

View additional resources in our resource library on community accountability: Resource Library Tag: Community Accountability

Recommendation1: Continue the dialogue about minimizing harm to survivors with your resources and power. We can't prevent and repair things if we're afraid to talk about them.
Recommendation 2: Decenter yourself as an ally. Our work will be better when impacted people are leading the work -- pass the mic!
Recommendation 3: Shift funding requirements and expectations. Complicated funding requirements exclude grassroots initiatives -- put money directly into communities in need instead.
Recommendation 4: Reconsider measurement, evaluation, and impact. Communicate with survivors directly about how well current strategies are working or need to be changed.
Recommendation 5: Directly address harm through prevention, mitigation, and repair. Harm can happen regardless of intention, but how we handle it is crucial and can help build or rebuild trust.
Recommendation 6: Continually invest in survivors along the continuum from initiation of support to the highest levels of leadership.
Recommendation 7: Ensure that storytelling or sharing trauma narratives for others is a genuine choice. Use trauma-informed principles and build storytelling skills so survivors feel ownership and not tokenized telling their stories.
Recommendation 8: Provide protections for when a survivors' image and story are their livelihood. Fairly compensate and have revocation protocols in place when using a survivor's story or likeness.

Tagged: accountability, community accountability, harm and repair, human rights, survivor leadership, trauma in the workplace, trauma-informed, Values