The Human Trafficking Standards Initiative is an open-source initiative within the non-profit organization, Resolve, that focuses on an international standard for data about human trafficking victims between agencies.
The Challenge
After 10 years of publishing the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, the U.S. Department of State acknowledges that every figure in every chart pertaining to victims and cases of trafficking on every continent are “estimates only, given the lack of uniformity in national reporting structures.”
Lack of clear data has been attributed to security concerns, bendable and misunderstood definitions, mixed criminal elements, gray areas especially within labor trafficking definitions, lack of harmony among existing data sources, over and under-counting of participants, and simple unwillingness to share data.