Ethics & Human Rights

UNIAP’s Ethics and Human Rights in Counter-Trafficking initiative is a time-bound, gap-filling initiative that was launched in 2008 in response to the identified global need for a standard set of ethical guidelines that could be applied specifically to anti-human trafficking research and programming.  Since 2008, UNIAP conceived of and has been implementing the Ethics project as follows:

·         2007-08:  Identified a clear need for ethical guidelines for anti-trafficking work.  After having to create internal guidelines for ethical principles for anti-trafficking research since the UN lacks these, UNIAP polled inter-agency partners and found that they too would be interested in receiving a standardized guide for applying ethical principles to their anti-trafficking work.

·         2008:  Drafted the manual, Guide to Ethics and Human Rights in Counter-Trafficking.  Drawing from academic standards for human subjects research and several sources on ethical guidelines from the World Health Organization, UNICEF (child-friendly guidelines), governments, and academia, UNIAP drafted the Guide to address all types of programming and research dealing with trafficking-affected persons, and began translating it into the six Mekong languages.

·         2009-2010:  Localization, capacity building, and mainstreaming into other training curricula.  After UNIAP finished translating the guide into the six Mekong languages, series of disseminations and training workshops (with training materials in local language) were carried out throughout the Mekong region, engaging senior-level and operational officers engaged in anti-trafficking from the police, social welfare, women’s, justice, and other ministries; journalists; academics; UN and NGO; and other sectors.  UNIAP also integrated ethics training modules into regional training curricula, including the COMMIT Regional Training Programme, which has trained several hundred government officials and NGO officers from the six Mekong governments plus Malaysia.

·         2011:  Completion of mainstreaming; end of initiative.  UNIAP is now in the process of finalizing and packaging ethics resources and training materials in English and the Mekong languages; these should be available soon on our website.