While campaigns to raise public awareness of human trafficking have been positive, their impact has been limited to date. For a campaign to be successful, it needs to reach its target audience with a clear message and a call to action that inspires people to step up and become involved. Many public awareness campaigns do not come close to reaching their full potential. One of the main barriers to success is the level of information that awareness campaigns typically provide. After 25 years of awareness campaigns on human trafficking, public understanding and involvement in the counter trafficking movement is very limited throughout the world. This is partly because the information on offer has been limited or incomplete.
Last summer, my wife Sylvia Yu and I did a 70-day, 27-city, 112-presentation road trip across the United States to increase public awareness of the challenges associated with human trafficking. This trip was motivated by a recognition that the scale of the problem we face continues to dwarf our best efforts. There are currently estimated to be 45.8 million people in slavery in the world today. From this overall total, we have managed to help less than 0.2% of the victims (author calculation, showing the proportion of victims assisted as listed in the 2016 Trafficking in Persons report [78,000] to 45.8 million slaves).
Among the surprising findings of this trip was the low level of general awareness among corporations, faith-based groups, schools, non-governmental organisations, and the general public. We estimated that less than 10% of the 4,000 people we spoke to had previously been exposed to at least a quarter of the information we presented regarding human trafficking. General awareness is an important prerequisite for a successful movement. Below is a summary of some of the major issues we encountered during our travels.
