Our impact
2023-2024

The Brazil hotspot aims to tackle the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) through our Com.Direitos (‘With Rights’) program. The hotspot program works with our partners to promote legislative changes at national, state and municipal levels; challenge social norms that tend to permit abuse of children; support civil society networks addressing CSEC; and provide services and support to survivors and children at risk.

In 2023, the Com.Direitos program has been at the heart of significant advances in policy and practice to more effectively combat CSEC. Advocacy from our program partners, drawing on the findings of three Freedom Fund research studies into CSEC in Brazil, influenced the new national anti-trafficking plan, while during the 18 May campaign against the sexual abuse and exploitation of children and adolescents, the federal government announced a new set of measures to tackle CSEC around the country, and President Lula committed to a country free of CSEC. The Freedom Fund’s leading role was recognised in the signing of an MOU with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, and the Brazilian Parliament to collaborate to tackle CSEC and trafficking in girls nationwide.

The hotspot works primarily in the Recife Metropolitan Region of Pernambuco State, where there is a high prevalence of CSEC. During the year, the Pernambuco state and Recife municipal governments agreed an emergency action plan to focus anti-CSEC efforts, and initiated emergency action in two critical areas of the city, with integrated efforts to prevent CSEC, protect victims, and prosecute perpetrators. The Freedom Fund continues to provide technical advice and support to city and state teams, especially regarding prioritising care and referrals for children and adolescents.

During the year, our seven frontline partners provided support and assistance to 5,290 survivors and children and adolescents at risk of CSEC. This included counselling and psychosocial support, access to education, and life skills and vocational training. We also reached nearly 14,000 children and adolescents through school-based training on CSEC risk awareness, protection and prevention. In addition, 1,600 family and community members received support to strengthen their ability to protect children from the risk of CSEC.

Support for practitioners in 2023 saw 1,838 health workers, educators, social workers, law enforcement and justice officials receive training, improving their ability to identify, report and assist with cases of CSEC. Our partner provided key support in implementing the Protected Listening Law, which provides for comprehensive care for children and adolescents affected by CSEC while preventing revictimising. The law also increases the possibility of holding perpetrators to account. Our partner helped develop the referral pathways, protocols and guidelines for professionals working on the frontlines in Recife to tackle CSEC and support survivors and children at risk.

In Ethiopia, the Freedom Fund works with local partners on two hotspot programs: safer migration and child domestic work. This report covers progress and outcomes during 2023 from our child domestic work program, which aims to improve child domestic workers’ working conditions and reduce child domestic servitude in Addis Ababa.

In 2023, our hotspot partners continued to shift attitudes among families, communities and employers in order to reduce exploitation and improve conditions for child domestic workers (CDWs). Almost 1,600 employers were directly reached by partners in 2023, leading to significant improvements in attitudes towards CDWs. A new Child Rights curriculum reached 225 children of employers, raising awareness about the rights of the CDWs they live with and equipping them to become child rights champions with their parents, their peers at school and their communities. Important changes for CDWs have included reduced working hours and improved access to services like education and medical care.

Almost 5,000 children accessed services in 2023 through our partners, with 329 receiving shelter and 144 reintegrated with their families. Other support included life skills training, access to education, and the creation of a community safe space for CDWs to access further services and support.

Partners continued to work with communities and local authorities to raise awareness, identify at-risk CDWs and refer them to appropriate services. Nearly 60 Iddirs (community groups) instituted protective measures, including introducing bylaws banning abuse and exploitation. Partners supported local-level prevention and response task forces, provided training on protection frameworks and case management to local authorities, and assisted with 42 prosecutions of perpetrators of abuse and exploitation (leading to 19 convictions – double the number of convictions compared to 2022).

Our hotspot program also supported civil society advocacy for enhanced protections and improved legislative frameworks, including the new National Alternative Childcare Guideline. Our partner Hope for Justice helped design the guideline, which brings together 34 organisations to ensure comprehensive services for vulnerable children like CDWs.

In Ethiopia, the Freedom Fund works with local partners on two hotspot programs: safer migration and child domestic work. This report covers progress and outcomes during 2023 from our safer migration program, which aims to prevent the exploitation of Ethiopian migrant domestic workers going to the Middle East.

Advocacy and networking by the Freedom Fund and our partners led to significant policy developments in 2023. These included the development of a comprehensive migration policy by the Ethiopian government and the issuing of directives on the rights of migrant workers and returnees. We also successfully advocated for the implementation of a digital registration system to reduce exploitation of migrant domestic workers by brokers and illegal recruiters.

In destination countries, the hotspot worked with Ethiopian domestic worker groups in Lebanon and Kuwait to improve systems of support for migrant workers. This included the setting up of a hotline which handles around 60 cases a month and liaises with the Ethiopian embassy when action is required. The workers’ group in Kuwait was also selected to help train new officers of the embassy before their deployment to Kuwait and other countries.

During the year, survivor-led organisations in Kuwait and Freedom Fund shelter partners in Ethiopia concluded MOUs, in order to facilitate the repatriation and reintegration of Ethiopian women returning from Kuwait. In 2023, more than 7,200 returnees/survivors received support services in Addis Ababa from Freedom Fund partners, with 354 women provided with access to shelter. Assistance included support with vocational training and alternative livelihoods, with 681 women supported to earn a new income or start a micro-enterprise during the year. In addition, a new formal employment scheme in Addis Ababa provided training and long-term support to 240 women returnees.

Building community understanding of safer migration helps reduce the risk of exploitation and supports reintegration. In 2023, four hotspot partners facilitated the inclusion of returning migrants in Community Conversation groups. These groups held 4,351 Community Conversations during the year, enabling returning migrants to re-establish relationships in the community and bring issues to the attention of community leaders.

Since 2015, the Freedom Fund has been partnering with Humanity United on a program in the Asia-Pacific region to address forced labour in seafood supply chains. As part of this regional program, in 2022 we started a hotspot program in Indonesia – the second largest seafood producing country in the world, and one of the main senders of migrant fishers to work on commercial fishing fleets globally.

The hotspot works with a range of Indonesian partner organisations to reduce vulnerability to forced labour in seafood processing and fishing communities by supporting fishery workers to organise together to claim their rights and demand decent working conditions.

During 2023, our partners provided training and support to worker groups to expand their reach and membership and build their capacity to pursue improvements in working conditions and provide assistance to individual workers. In 2023, our partners provided direct support to 576 fishing and seafood workers, 117 of which were likely victims of forced labour and/or human trafficking; support to 10 worker associations and unions, reaching over 1,300 members; and assistance in relation to 31 legal cases.

Several partners undertook research on issues affecting fishery workers, using the findings to inform advocacy actions. Achievements during 2023 included initial steps towards the establishment of a multi-stakeholder forum to protect the rights and well-being of fishery workers in Bali, modelled on the North Sulawesi forum supported by two of our partners. This model is now being used as a reference for potential replication by the national government and other regional governments. Partners also advocated for improvements to village-level regulations to provide better protections against exploitation, for better regulation of migrant fishers in Central Java province, and for improved protections for Indonesian fishers migrating to Taiwan.

During 2023, intensifying armed conflict and economic hardship fuelled widespread protection and trafficking risks for the people of Myanmar. Young people, women and girls, and migrant workers faced heightened risks of sex trafficking, forced marriage, and forced labour.

In 2023, the Freedom Fund worked with four women-led civil society partners in Myanmar to address extreme forms of exploitation and human trafficking across vulnerable communities in Kachin and Northern Shan states, as well as around Yangon. Our partners supported community groups to help victims to escape and reintegrate, and help prevent forced marriage and trafficking. In doing so, the hotspot built further evidence for the powerful and scalable role of communities, with local NGO support, taking the lead in identifying trafficking victims and people at risk, and providing or linking them with assistance and support.

During 2023, our partners provided training and support to 100 local action teams, community watch groups and self-help groups (with a total of 583 individual members) so they could share anti-trafficking information and support victims to get to safety. Despite a slow-down in outreach activities after an escalation in violence in October, the program still directly reached 2,233 individuals in vulnerable communities and settlements of internally displaced people during the year.

Our partners also directly facilitated the liberation of 43 survivors of trafficking; assisted 159 survivors of forced marriage, forced labour and sexual exploitation, including providing food, safe houses, and medical and psychosocial care; and provided livelihood support to 69 individuals – including survivors and internally displaced persons, particularly women and girls.

Since its inception in 2014, the Freedom Fund’s Nepal hotspot program has worked with communities that are emerging from agricultural bonded labour – a system called Harawa-Charawa, meaning people who plough the land and graze the cattle under the landlords. In 2021, we expanded our hotspot program to include two other major communities in Nepal that were previously in bonded labour — the Kamaiya and Haliya.

After years of struggle to get attention for their rights, Harawa-Charawa communities were finally declared ‘free’ in 2022, and with the support of our hotspot partners, they are now working towards getting comprehensive rehabilitation packages from national, provincial and local-level governments.

In 2023, our Nepal hotspot program contributed to significant successes for the Harawa-Charawa at national, provincial and local levels. Following long-term, continuous advocacy by our partners, the national government committed in its 2023 annual policy statement to make a number of provisions for the rehabilitation of bonded labourers. In Province 2, issues faced by the Harawa-Charawa were formally acknowledged for the first time by the provincial government, which then drafted guidelines to identify Harawa-Charawa and issue ID cards — a first step in accessing rehabilitation support. Also during the year, provincial governments in all our program areas allocated budget for agricultural bonded labourers, and provincial and local-level governments introduced guidelines for the rehabilitation of Harawa-Charawa communities.

Complementing the advocacy work, our hotspot partners worked directly with Haliya, Kamaiya and Harawa-Charawa communities to support their rehabilitation. Achievements during the year included:

• 4,456 agricultural bonded labourers earned a new income or started a micro-enterprise and 246 received vocational skills training
• 8,706 community members gained access to essential government services
• 2,261 children were enrolled in school, 879 received academic support through tuition classes, and 2,310 received scholarships to prevent them from dropping out of school
• 353 community groups were mobilised at the community level.

Since 2015, the Freedom Fund has been partnering with Humanity United on a program to address forced labour in seafood supply chains across the Asia-Pacific region. As part of this joint Asia Pacific Seafood program, the Freedom Fund’s hotspot program in Thailand worked with partners to support seafood workers to organise, claim rights and demand decent working conditions.

2023 was the final year of the Thailand hotspot. Programming during the year focused on undertaking key final activities and advocacy, and on exit planning to ensure partner sustainability. All partners secured funding to continue working on seafood and/or broader migrant worker rights beyond 2023.

Direct assistance to fishery workers in 2023 included: supporting 1,187 workers to join worker groups or community networks; providing assistance with 636 legal cases relating to forced labour and other legal issues; providing social or legal assistance to 2,729 individuals; providing training to 730 fishers on occupational health and safety; and supporting 270 workers to gain access to government services that will enable them to get further support.

Partners also supported worker leaders and worker groups to negotiate with employers on a range of issues, affecting the working conditions of thousands of workers. This included supporting the Pattani Fishery Workers Group to make 12 new agreements with vessel owners to deliver improvements in working conditions.

During the year partners advocated to government and business to improve key laws, policies and processes to reduce vulnerability to forced labour. After advocacy by partners and other groups, the government significantly reduced visa fees for migrant workers, which is critical to reducing vulnerability to debt. Partners also successfully influenced government regulations that define the role and responsibilities of labour inspectors to investigate potential malpractice; and advocated against the proposed rollback of existing fishery laws and policies that provide protections against labour exploitation.

As well as outlining work done by our hotspot partners in 2023, our report also includes a summary of key hotspot achievements from 2015 to 2023.