Aid effectiveness and transparency: The case of anti-trafficking Rebecca Napier-Moore and Mike Dottridge Lots of people talk about money in anti-trafficking work. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has tried to estimate the profits related to forced labour, with a figure of US$150 billion a year gaining traction. Others have tried to estimate the ‘cost of a slave’, though it is unclear what this kind of estimate is supposed to achieve apart from fundraising and PR. Governments and businesses are starting to try to ensure ‘trafficking-free’ investments and supply chains. Very rarely does anyone talk about the money that governments and philanthropists give to end trafficking. Doing so involves critiquing a sector that most people see as doing unqualifiedly good work. Critiquing the way money is spent or how much of it is spent involves ‘biting the hand that feeds’ and funds the work. No development/aid sector is perfect, however, and frank conversations about financial transparency are vital to accountability – accountability not only to funders, but also to the people who are supposed to benefit from anti-trafficking funding. Lack of financial data Although we have compiled a significant amount of data on how much money is spent on anti-trafficking initiative, this shouldn’t be viewed outside of context or without regard for methodology and missing data. There are three main problems which make the data hard to add up: • Many figures are unknown because, in many cases, both funders and funded organisations lack transparency • Lack of publicly available reporting means that it is unclear whether allocated money is actually spent • Definitions of anti-trafficking are problematic – does antitrafficking work cover broader gender equality or safe migration programmes, or does it also involve programmes concerned with other forms of exploitation? Or should programmes focus specifically on issues related to human trafficking, such as providing legal aid for trafficked persons, to qualify as ‘antitrafficking’? In any case, knowing the total amount of money spent on antitrafficking work does not tell us very much without more details. In particular, details about how money is used are required to differentiate between money that is spent, both directly and indirectly, on assisting trafficked persons and money spent on that which is generally referred to as ‘capacity-building’ and administrative costs. Nonetheless, here are some big numbers we can share. In 2011 the European Commission (EC) gave US$15 million (€11 million) to projects with purported anti-trafficking aims. That same year a multitude of US government agencies gave $51 million to international projects to counter trafficking and another $20 million to domestic ones. Since then, we do not know what the full spending figures are for the USA or the EU. The USA has published data from the Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, but not equivalent data for spending by the Department of Defense or other agencies. Similarly, the labyrinth required to find the EC data is a dark and winding one. The only other large donor that currently spends more than $10 million a year internationally is Norway, which spent $12.4 million in 2011. Martina Ucnikova from the Walk Free Foundation details additional top government anti-slavery donors giving international aid for a ten-year period from 2003–2012 (Ucnikova, 2014). These government and inter-government spenders have recently been joined by a non-governmental organisation, hoping to spend at their levels. The Freedom Fund aims to raise $100 million by 2020 to combat ‘modern slavery’, a category in which they place, among other things, trafficking, forced labour and forced marriage. It is unclear from looking at these and other numbers how much it costs to run the US, EC, Norwegian or Freedom Fund antitrafficking offices themselves. This is not a judgement on those costs (because how can we judge without knowing the facts?), but merely a statement that organisational spending is not transparent. How much does it cost the US Department of State to compile and publish the annual US Trafficking in Persons Report? How much does it cost to administer the highly complicated grant-making procedures at the European Commission? Further observation of the numbers involved led to the emergence of several observable trends: A large proportion of money aimed at anti-trafficking initiatives goes to large international organisations. We question whether this is the most efficient way to allocate funds, as all of these organisations are very top heavy. In both 2012 and 2013, 44 per cent of US Department of State international grants Adapted from an article for the Trafficking Research Project, available at www.thetraffickingresearchproject.wordpress.com. With thanks also to the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW). The Anti-Trafficking Review (www.antitraffickingreview.org) promotes a human rights-based approach to anti-trafficking. It explores trafficking in its broader context, including gender analyses and intersections with labour and migrant rights. Issue 3 (September 2014) represents the first ever research on how much money is spent combating the human rights abuses that amount to human trafficking. Commonwealth Governance 114 Handbook 2014/15
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