Human trafficking: The Houston Approach

Minal Patel Davis serves as Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s Special Advisor on Human Trafficking, the first municipal-level position of its kind in the U.S. Davis is charged with making a local impact on human trafficking in the 4th largest city in the U.S. from a policy-level perspective and by advancing systems change.

She developed and is currently implementing Mayor Turner’s Anti-Human Trafficking Strategic Plan, which is the first comprehensive municipal response to human trafficking by a U.S. city. She has been appointed in July 2015. She says, “This is about humanity, humans do not respect humans. It comes down to selfishness, for men who purchase women to satisfy their sexual desires, people who traffic people for money and labour. This is because one’s selfish desires and the want of money,” says Minal.

She explains the approach: This is a system approach to human trafficking because it is from mayor’s office, that has purview over many systems, and where quite a bit of power is associated, and we get to garner will from the NGO’s to be on the mayor’s task force.

We did a national inventory of initiatives to see what was happening around the country. Then did a local landscape analysis to see what was happening in Houston, that helped reveal the gap not just in services but across the board.

We realised that there is an opportunity to control human trafficking, especially labour trafficking. Most of the times the conversation is the US is about sex trafficking. We realised there is a shelter gap, there is a need for psychological services in a systemic way.

Our plan was developed in response to the gaps revealed. Our first response was to institutionalise Houston’s response. And second objective was to raise awareness.  We started doing anti-trafficking media campaign and advertising. We did a multi-lingual media campaign that involved TV, radio, billboard, taxies, and buses.

We had to translate the campaign in five official languages Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic and Urdu. The goal was to increase the information of trafficking report. We also did a social media campaign and so we launched a facebook app to spread the message to parents and people around Houston on dangers of internet etc., We gave shelters to people who were prone to human trafficking and along with NGOs made them accessible. Basically, it is a zero-tolerance policy for anti- trafficking.”

“Three other cities are now adapting the model.” “There were various challenges too, “One of the difficulties was to mobilise city departments and their will to participate. Training, policy change etc were time consuming. NGOs don’t always get along. And a few would worry about preserving their turf.” 

She reveals, “The Anti trafficking cell in the US has received 27000 from across the country in seven and half year is only an indication of awareness not the extent of trafficking.” 

She thinks there is a tremendous work from all the stakeholders done in India, however there is no one solution to all regions. “I think that everything is different here compared to the US. So, you cannot simply adapt Houston’s plan. You will have to do that kind of extensive analysis and arrive at a solution.”

By Askari Jaffer