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When do anti-trafficking pros listen to their critics? [1]
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Date: 2025-05
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.
It is easy for critics to blame 'the mainstream' for not listening to their arguments. But it can also be said that the sweeping condemnations and maximalist positions favoured by critics make it harder for such messages to find a receptive audience. We asked Nick how he engages with critics, where he thinks they go wrong with their messaging, and how a more constructive dialogue between practitioners and critics could emerge.
We greatly appreciate Nick sharing his thoughts here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Joel Quirk (BTS): Freedom Fund has existed for over a decade. Do you think the field has evolved in a positive direction in that time? Are there specific wins you would point to?
Nick Grono (Freedom Fund): Yes, the field has evolved significantly, and largely in a positive way. The Freedom Fund has contributed to this positive shift, both as a policy actor and implementer.
There’s been a move away from the NGO raid and rescue model to more thoughtful, engaged interventions. That old model hasn’t disappeared entirely. But there has been a dramatic shift in understanding the need for evidence-based interventions, and the importance of investing in research to generate that evidence.
We’ve also seen a shift to ensuring people with lived experience, such as survivor leaders, are at the centre of the debate. We still have a long way to go; there’s still a lot of tokenism. But there’s good work being done around this that just wasn’t on the agenda before.
Ten years ago, survivor engagement was largely a box-ticking exercise, if it happened at all. “Hey, let’s get a survivor to speak on the panel and tell us their story of pain and suffering” – that sort of thing. And while there is still too much of that, there’s more nuance now.
Finally, there’s also been positive movement in the human rights and due diligence space, particularly regarding supply chains. Those would be the wins I would single out. The anti-slavery space is much more thoughtful than it was a decade ago. We’re in a better place now.
Joel: Where would you position the Freedom Fund within this larger story?
Nick: Freedom Fund has always been in all those spaces – centring survivors, the need for better evidence, and human rights and due diligence – but over the years we’ve evolved within those spaces. We used to be more about service delivery to grassroots partners, and less about system change.
We’ve become more sophisticated in thinking about systems change, and more invested in survivor leadership. We’re also investing more in research. So, our thinking has evolved but hasn’t fundamentally changed.
Joel: BTS launched in 2014, the same year as Freedom Fund. How did you perceive us at the time? I’ve often wondered if we looked, from a practitioner standpoint, as a bunch of trolls who were attacking the people who were trying to fix things, rather than providing constructive points of intervention. What have been your impressions of BTS over the years?
Nick: I remember being irritated by a couple things early on, like the reflexive criticism of the Global Slavery Index. Not that it wasn’t open to all sorts of critiques on quality of data and methodology back then. But BTS’s critique didn’t show any attempt to engage in the underlying argument about the importance of measurement.
Another one was the work on philanthrocapitalism. I remember thinking, “Fair enough, but we can apply exactly the same critiques to something like university funding. We shouldn’t use this critique to try and de-legitimise the work without analysing the work itself. Let’s focus on the work.”
At least, that’s my approach. I understand that there’s an argument to be had there, but I felt the focus was too limited. There wasn’t enough attention on the actual implementation.
Joel: So you saw it as bomb throwing without trying to find ways to make things better?
Nick: I recognise I have my own sensitivities and biases around this, but yes. I had the perception that that was the approach, rather than something that offered strategic critiques here and there alongside a genuine recognition of other perspectives.
Every now and then BTS would publish a straw-man piece offering a view that differed from its central theses, but these did feel somewhat token. When I was asked to do a piece for your philanthrocapitalism series, for example, I thought I had to write something – even though I knew it would not be well received by your constituency – to offer a different perspective. I think I was the only article defending the role of big philanthropy, with seven or eight others largely criticising it.
Joel: How much does it matter that BTS was started by academics with PhDs based at universities? I’ve been regularly told that academic arguments are too divorced from practical realities to have immediate traction. Was there an ivory tower egghead issue?
Nick: Not necessarily. Freedom Fund has always valued academics and research. We’ve funded 68 research partners across 24 universities, including big international universities and smaller universities in Thailand, Brazil, Nepal and India. We’ve also funded research partners based in think tanks in Africa, Brazil and India. We see academic expertise as key to what we do.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/what-helps-practitioners-listen-to-their-critics-an-interview-with-nick-grono/
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