We don’t need Heroes – When it comes to human trafficking, we need to question the narrative around rescuing survivors. ….. by ROOP SEN – Sanjog
Everyone loves a hero. The popular imagination of this hero is a sword-brandishing savior who fights the villain, bleeds in war, and wears their scars as a badge of honour. And when the war is one against slavery and trafficking, rescued survivors are brandished as trophies, and the slave-rescuing heroes are awarded for their altruism and courage.
The anti-trafficking or anti-slavery movements thrive off these popular thoughts, because it capitalizes on the collective memories of heroism that we have grown up on, through stories, films, mythology, and religion. We often look for that one voice, one face, one individual to laud for their courage and heroism that helped save the rest of humanity, and particularly survivors.
It’s easier to sell heroism than question the system
Large international organisations that raise funds from philanthropists and governments for anti-trafficking projects report their struggles to convince donors of the value for money if they don’t subscribe to the ‘rescue-rehabilitation’ narrative. (According to this narrative, a person in exploitation needs to be rescued by nonprofits and anti-slavery crusaders who will then provide them with the courage, healing, and resilience that will ultimately restore them.)
Anti-slavery organisations working on this paradigm in India or Africa may need to produce claims such as ‘We freed 20,000 indentured labourers from traffickers’. These claims are easily understood by lay donors as simple, quantifiable, and populist claims of impact.
But statements like these hide more than they reveal. It leaves one wondering what happened to the traffickers and consumers of trafficked labour? How has the programme impacted policies around prevention of trafficking, and their implementation in that state? Has it left any sustainable, structural impact on the sectors that have been using trafficked labour?
Organisations and activists who take on a systems thinking approach to analyse social, economic, cultural, and political factors underlying the organised exploitation of vulnerable classes should come up with strategies that address some of these systemic issues. If law enforcement does not prosecute the traffickers, then nonprofit leadership should analyze the reasons that allow for that dereliction of duty and take measures within their power to hold the authorities accountable.
However, in most cases, an organisation’s real fight against a complex power structure that involves local and national governments and feudal powers gets reduced to rescue-rehabilitation narratives without unpacking people’s journeys from captivity to freedom.
… part 2 tomorrow
