To mark our tenth anniversary, we are releasing a new feature which reflects on how the anti-trafficking field has evolved, and where it might be – or should be – going in the future. As part of this project we sat down with Nick Grono, CEO of the Freedom Fund and one of the most influential individuals within the anti-trafficking field over the last decade. The conversation focused upon two main themes: learning and adaption, and critics of anti-trafficking policies.
The anti-trafficking community's capacity to learn and adapt is a crucial factor determining its future trajectory. For some of anti-trafficking's critics, who see the same talking points and policies getting repeated time and time again, the question is whether the anti-trafficking community is capable of learning at all. We asked Nick what has and has not changed in the last decade, from his perspective. How has the field learned, and what does this mean for its evolution in the future?
Our second theme focuses on the impact, or lack thereof, of anti-trafficking's critics. Since the mid-1990s, critics of dominant approaches to anti-trafficking have been trying their best to make the case for multiple course corrections. However, these efforts don’t appear to have had much effect on actual policies and practices. This has resulted in widespread frustration amongst anti-trafficking's critics, who feel that they are shouting into the void.
