About Our Work
Today, millions of people around the world are suffering injustice
More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than during the entire course of the trans-Atlantic slave trade: Millions toil in bondage, their work and even their bodies the property of an owner.
Trafficking in persons generates profits in excess of £6 billion a year for those who, by force and deception, sell people into slavery and sexual bondage. More than 2 million children are held in forced prostitution. The AIDS pandemic continues to spread, and the abuse of trafficking victims in the global sex trade exacerbates this trend.
In many countries around the world, paedophiles find that they can violate children sexually with impunity. Although police should bring protection, in many nations, their presence is a source of insecurity for the poor. Suspects of all ages can be held interminably before trials, imprisoned in foul conditions for crimes they did not commit.
The land rights of women are violated on a vast scale worldwide, but with particular ferocity in Africa, leaving widows and other women in vulnerable positions unable to care for themselves or their children. Around the world, women suffer the indignity of rape and of seeing their abusers face no consequences for crimes of sexual violence.
Often lacking access to their own justice systems and unable to protect themselves or their families from those more powerful, it is overwhelmingly the poor who bear the burden of these abuses.
The Facts
- The total market value of illicit human trafficking is estimated to be in excess of £16 billion (UN)
- Each year, more than 2 million children are exploited in the global commercial sex trade (UNICEF)
- 27 million men, women and children are held as slaves (Kevin Bales, Disposable People)
- 1 in 5 women is a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime (UN Development Fund for Women).
- More than 1 million children live in detention, the vast majority awaiting trial for minor offences (UNICEF)
Our Response
IJM seeks to make public justice systems work for victims of abuse and oppression who urgently need the protection of the law.
Collaborative Casework Model
IJM investigators, lawyers and social workers intervene in individual cases of abuse in partnership with local authorities.
By pushing individual cases of abuse through the justice system from the investigative stage to the prosecution stage, IJM determines the specific source of corruption, lack of resources, or lack of good will in the system that denies victims the protection of their legal systems. In collaboration with local authorities, IJM addresses these specific points of breakdown to meet the urgent needs of victims of injustice.
In all of its casework, IJM has a four-fold purpose:
1. Victim Relief
IJM’s first priority in its casework is immediate relief for the victim of the abuse being committed.
2. Perpetrator Accountability
IJM seeks to hold perpetrators accountable for their abuse in their local justice systems. Accountability changes fear expectations: When would-be perpetrators are rightly afraid of the consequences of their abuse, the vulnerable no longer need to fear them.
3. Victim Aftercare
IJM aftercare professionals and trusted local aftercare partners work to ensure that victims of oppression are equipped to rebuild their lives and respond to the complex emotional and physical needs that often arise as a result of abuse.
4. Structural Change
IJM seeks to prevent abuse from being committed against others at risk by strengthening the community factors and local judicial systems that will deter potential oppressors.
