Blog

Financial Security Means Safer Migration: Reducing Vulnerabilities Among Migrant Workers in India’s Construction Industry

In December 2020, an operator for the Jan Sahas helpline answered a call from a man claiming that his brother and six other workers were being held in inhumane conditions and against their will at a construction site in Faribadad. The man reported what his brother had told him- that since arriving, the migrants had …

Moving the Needle: How Anti-Slavery Efforts Can Use Innovative Finance to Mobilize Funding and Make Change

Innovative finance has been put to work for several years across international development. However, anti-slavery efforts still tend to rely on traditional grant finance from donors, whether governments, multilateral institutions, or philanthropic ventures. New funding approaches could help bring much-needed additional finance into preventing trafficking.  Among other ideas, GFEMS is interested in outcomes-based approaches like Development Impact …

Democratizing Migration: How a Mobile App is Empowering Migrant Workers and Disrupting Migration Systems

For migrant workers across the globe, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and nation-wide lockdowns have taken a heavy toll. Confronting job losses, reduced work hours and salaries, and a rise in deportations, migrant workers are also coping with the mental effects of a pandemic that has left them isolated in a foreign place and …

Making trauma-informed care the norm for survivors

Trauma-informed care is crucial to the empowerment of survivors. It ensures survivors are not re-traumatized during legal proceedings or while receiving recovery services; provides self-ownership over their own recovery; and helps them to lead safe and empowered futures. Yet, it is frequently not implemented by governments, law enforcement, judiciary, or care providers, who are frequently …

Update: TERA is creating demand for ethical recruitment in India

GFEMS provides seed funding for ethical businesses to grow their market share, shifting demand away from exploitative recruitment to more ethical practices. Working with Seefar, we have created TERA (The Ethical Recruitment Agency), India’s first ethical recruitment agency. TERA aims to reduce forced labor by pioneering research, making a business case on profitability of ethical …

Bridging the buyer-supplier gap to root out forced labor in supply chains

Global supply chains are a major perpetrator of modern slavery. With over 16 million victims in the private sector, business involvement is key to sustainable, systems change that eliminates forced labor. In the apparel sector, a lack of transparency between buyers, suppliers, and manufacturers is what often allows modern slavery to go unnoticed. International apparel …

A Better Way to Do Business: Investing in the Fair Model to End Forced Labor

Ethical business means better business. This is the message that our partner, Fair Employment Foundation (FEF), continues to share with businesses and recruiting agencies across the globe.  Founded on the belief that “forced labor is a solvable world problem,” FEF works to fix broken recruitment systems and build market solutions to end the forced labor …

We Need More Ethical Recruitment Startups

Ethical recruitment is a high priority for GFEMS, as it is for many other organizations fighting modern slavery. Ethical recruitment is a solution that offers great promise to ensure that labor migration leads to successful outcomes, and not to exploitation. One in four victims of forced labor is an international migrant — nearly six million …

Making Modern Slavery Prevalence Studies Count (Accurately)

GFEMS recently funded a prevalence study in Karamoja, Uganda to determine the proportion of children in households (age 12-17) who have been sexually exploited for commercial gain. Although analysis is on-going, the data indicate that the prevalence of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in Karamoja is gender agnostic. In other words, there is no …