To mark Beyond Trafficking and Slavery's 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 Ryan Heman, the head of the global supply chains team at Humanity United (and our principal funder for many years). The conversation focused upon two main themes: learning and adaption, and funding and its effects.
Funding is the essential lubricant that drives anti-trafficking forward. It both constrains and enables organisations and individuals in ways that are often hard to see from the outside. The quest for cash creates powerful incentives to mimic the priorities and languages of funders, and in this way the preferences and perspectives of states, donors, corporations and foundations from the Global North have shaped the anti-trafficking field in profound ways. Civil society organisations have been obliged to both respond to and reinforce funders’ views about the world.
This is particularly true in the case of anti-trafficking, since many organisations who work on related issues have strategically migrated into anti-trafficking circles in the hope of securing more resources. By talking to Ryan we hope to make some of these dynamics more visible, to better understand how the field looks from a funder standpoint, and to critically reflect upon the position of BTS within this funding ecosystem.
