Why is it vital to measure the impact of anti-trafficking responses?

Since the UN Trafficking Protocol was adopted in 2000, a great deal has been published about cases of human trafficking. In some countries, information about trafficking cases is collected by a statutory ‘monitoring’ agency, such as Portugal’s Observatory on Trafficking in Human Beings. However, monitoring involves more than collecting figures: it includes making a quality judgement on whether measures implemented to stop human trafficking meet standards set by international or national law. Since 2000, there have been numerous initiatives to develop methods for monitoring the implementation of anti-trafficking laws, policies and related measures, to see if they are having their intended effect and to find out if they are having other, unintended effects.

The most advanced international monitoring procedure comes from the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA), the treaty-monitoring body created by the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (2005). However, at national level, both governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) routinely want to assess whether progress is being made with respect to a wider range of anti-trafficking laws, policies and other measures, so there continues to be interest in alternative methods. For example, in 2007 a Global Alliance against Traffic in Women report criticised anti-trafficking measures that cause harm to people other than traffickers (GAATW, 2007). The title, Collateral Damage, brought into the mainstream the idea that well-intentioned anti-trafficking measures could have unintended and adverse impacts on trafficking victims. It emphasised the importance of monitoring these impacts, so that remedial action could be taken.

Suitable questions to assess the results of anti-trafficking measures might seem straightforward (suggestions usually focus on, ‘Have there been more arrests?’ and ‘Are more trafficking victims being identified and assisted?’), but in practice it is useful to distinguish between the short-, medium-and long-term effects of measures taken. The terms used in English to distinguish between these timeframes are ‘output’, ‘outcome’ and ‘impact’. These distinctions can be difficult to understand.