Jul 2, 2020
In Episode 5 of Series 5 of The Rights Track, Todd is talking with Ravi Prakash and Phil Northall. Ravi is a consultant for the Freedom Fund’s new Rajasthan ‘hotspot’, which is an approach used to carry out work on specific geographic areas with a high prevalence of modern slavery. He is a child rights specialist with experience working on issues such as child protection and right to education. Phil works as part of the University of Nottingham Rights Lab's Communities and Society Programme to understand and advance local responses to modern slavery. This includes work to build a slavery-resilient cities index to help us better understand how communities become slavery-free and slavery-proof. Together with Todd they discuss the connections between the UN Sustainable Goals SDG 8.7 on tackling modern slavery and SDG 11 on creating sustainable cities.
00.00 – 06.29
Phil begins by outlining a model of a resilient city. The model is adapted from the original work of Hollings and then Hollings in collaboration with others. Described as an adaptive cycle of reslience. It combines the ability to recover from incidents of slavery with reducing/removing vulnerability to slavery going forward.
Four stages of the model are described:
“Assets” are defined as:
The aim is to develop a regional resilience map for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Recent experience in sharing the model in Brazil showed that the challenge of getting agencies to work together is the same although the cultures are different.
06.29 – 13.55
Ravi talks about the Jaipur Child Labour Free Initiative,.
He explains that large numbers of children are involved in forced labour. Many are trafficked from marginalised communities in Bihar state by powerful members of their own community and taken to employers in Jaipur.
The project involves the effective collaboration of a wide range of partners including local businesses, the judiciary, and child victims with the aim of changing existing practices using child labour.
The project has achieved notable successes including five child labour convictions.
13.55 – 15.44
Ravi goes onto explain that strong links exist between civil society, prosecutors and state/national government.
15.44 – 17.20
Phil compares the Jaipur initiative to his model and finds a large degree of match on all four levels, especially:
17.20 – 19.40
Education is a key entitlement for the children and a key focus of the project.
For trafficked children from Bihar:
For local children in Jaipur the twin objectives are:
19.40 – 24.20
Phil makes the point that SDG 11 focuses on environmental and economic resilience in cities. He suggests more focus is needed on social issues and references the work of colleague Alison Gardner on the social determinants of community resilience.
He argues that building adaptive resilience cycles helps to keep policy windows open long after an event has occurred.
Ravi argues that building sustainability and resilience is not a top down process.
In Jaipur the key areas are:
24.20- end
Ravi makes some final points about the impact of the COVID pandemic on the work of the Freedom Fund in India. He says:
However, the project is working with Bihar government who are sharing data on all returning children to find proof of forced or bonded labour and to build a list of traffickers and employers of children for future prosecution.
The project is also monitoring road and rail transport to try to intercept and return trafficked children to their villages.
Further Reading