Read our new report, released July 2019:
NDWA's Beyond Survival campaign was launched in 2013 and seeks to build the capacity of our affiliates and their communities to respond to the human trafficking of domestic workers. Through worker-led organizing that links human trafficking to worker rights, immigrant rights, gender equity and racial justice, we are working to end human trafficking in the U.S. and around the world.
Beyond Survival focuses on lifting up the experience and vision of trafficked domestic workers in our membership. Rather than just telling stories of abuse and survival, our campaign tells stories of leadership and policy change led by workers themselves.
Policy Recommendations
Our 2019 Report, Human Trafficking at Home: Labor Trafficking of Domestic Workers created in partnership with the Polaris Project, follows up on our 2015 and 2017 reports. The report is the result of qualitative and quantitative research into the realities of life for domestic workers. Data comes from Polaris’s National Human Trafficking Hotline, from an extensive survey of domestic workers conducted by the NDWA and through third party research. The data showed that of the approximately 8,000 labor trafficking cases identified between December 2007 and December 2017, the highest number of cases involved domestic work. That number likely represents only a small fraction of the problem, as human trafficking in all its forms is severely underreported. The Report provides legal and societal recommendations for domestic workers and survivors of human trafficking to lead the way forward for data-driven solutions to end labor trafficking.
In March of 2017, the Beyond Survival Campaign published its groundbreaking report: The Human Trafficking of Domestic Workers: Findings from the Beyond Survival Campaign. The report was co-authored with the Institute for Policy Studies. It offers new findings about human trafficking in domestic work. Through data gathered from in-depth interviews of groups organizing domestic workers who have survived human trafficking, we present our findings on the prevalence and trends related to trafficking in this labor sector.
Our first report, Beyond Survival: Organizing to End Human Trafficking of Domestic Workers, published in January of 2015, provides an overview of the problem of domestic worker trafficking and offers detailed recommendations for action at multiple levels. Click here to download the executive summary.
Our policy solutions, developed in collaboration with survivors, call for:
- Policies that prioritize trafficking prevention, access to legal protections and services, and accountability for traffickers.
- Changing immigration enforcement practices to meet the needs of survivors of human trafficking. These changes should include ending the involvement of state and local police in immigration enforcement, ensuring immigrant workers can assert their labor rights without fear of deportation and restoring prosecutorial discretion that prioritizes family reunification and human rights.
- Ensuring that policy makers are committed to human rights and equal protection of all workers, including domestic workers, and are committed to engagement and consultation with civil society and directly impacted workers.
- Anti-trafficking legislation that comprehensively addresses ending all forms of human trafficking both globally and in the US.