In 2022, after 16 years of operation, Love Justice hit a record of 30,000 intercepts. In just a short span of two more years, that number has more than doubled. Today, at the time of this writing, Love Justice has proudly intercepted over 75,000 people to stop them from being trafficked. This drastic leap in impact has many asking, is this real?
If you’ve ever questioned the legitimacy of our impact numbers, you’re not alone. We also question them constantly—and that’s a good thing!
At Love Justice, we are not only passionate about achieving impact but also vigilant about measuring it scientifically so that any impact we claim has been thoroughly tested. As our impact numbers continue to grow exponentially, the question of “is this truly legitimate?” has been a point of serious consideration for our leaders.
Since the nature of our work is preventative, measuring tangible impact can sometimes be challenging because no matter how much we think a person is likely being deceived into a situation of human trafficking, we often don’t know for absolute certainty unless it happens (and of course … the whole aim of our work is that it doesn’t happen).
As we strive to measure our impact as accurately as we can, the leadership team developed a verification process to confirm whether an intercept was justified based on the risk of trafficking.
The verification process
The decision to intercept is based on three criteria, but we’ll start with the first two.
Someone who:
a) May be vulnerable to enslavement andb) Is moving to a place/situation from which they would have difficulty getting home.
These two criteria together put someone at high risk of being trafficked.
Cousins 10-year-old Madhavi* and 5-year-old Shadiza* were out with Madhavi’s father getting fruit juice when the girls got separated from him in a crowd of people at the train station. In their confusion, they boarded a random train and arrived at another crowded station where our staff work—five minutes away from a notorious red light district where many young girls are trafficked. The girls spent the night on the train platform, not knowing what to do.
Although they did not appear to be in the active process of trafficking, their vulnerability as lost minors and proximity to the red light district where trafficking is known to happen regularly made the risk of imminent trafficking extremely high without intervention.
Both of the first two criteria must be met in order to justify an intercept.
If someone fits both the criteria for high risk of trafficking AND the third criteria:
c) there is evidence indicating illegitimate means of control……then there is a high risk that trafficking may be actively happening already.
Najmul,* a boy from a small village in South Asia, mysteriously woke up on a moving train after an odd encounter with a stranger, with no memory of how he got there.
As a minor in an unfamiliar environment, he was vulnerable to trafficking, and he lacked the resources to get home safely or take care of himself. But in addition to this, the potential drugging element and lack of consent demonstrate an illegitimate means of control, giving evidence that he may have been actively in the process of being trafficked.
Please note that neither of these examples are comprehensive—there are many factors that indicate potential trafficking.
Both of these intercepts—whether high risk or evidence of potential trafficking—are intercepts that passed a “but for” test: that this person was in imminent danger of being trafficked but for our team’s timely intervention. This ensures that we are not counting cases where the outcome would be the same whether we had been involved or not.
When I visited one of our stations in South Asia, I saw our teams talking with a young woman who met the criteria for evidence that trafficking may be happening. She was from a poor village and was traveling for the promise of becoming a famous singer, and our team very much doubted that the scrappy-looking young men traveling with her had any real influence in the music industry.
Although there were numerous red flags and it seemed likely the young men were lying to her, she refused our team’s help and ultimately continued her journey. We can’t count that as impact, because the end result was the same regardless of our presence there.
Likewise, when an individual is intercepted by local police and referred to us for further help, we cannot count those as intercepts, because they would have been intercepted whether or not we were there.
Once the intercept is documented, two local national verifiers (who are rigorously trained) review the case to ensure it meets the requirements to count as an intercept. Having local verifiers is important to manage some of the cultural nuances in each country. If the verifiers disagree, it then goes up to a regional steward for further review.
In addition to that, leadership teams at various levels perform routine audits and checks to ensure that impact is continually being recorded accurately.
External review
To further demonstrate Love Justice’s extreme commitment to scientific accuracy in measuring impact—in 2024, leadership hired an external reviewer to perform an audit on our intercepts.
The team chose Uganda for the audit, because it was exploding with impact, rapidly growing to an average of 550 intercepts per month. They hired a local national human rights attorney with no bias for or against Love Justice and asked her to verify not according to our own process but according to her professional expertise.
The hired attorney evaluated over 100 cases in Uganda and determined that all of them were legitimately high risk of trafficking.
“I don’t think that we were expecting that,” said Hannah Munn, who oversees the verification process as a senior director with LJI. “I think I was expecting someone to come back and say, you know, maybe 70% or 75% are high risk trafficking, maybe 25% are not. I think we were all surprised that she came back saying, ‘100%, yes, I think they were at risk.’”
They repeated the process in Malawi and again, an independent attorney reviewed over 100 cases and declared only one case to be potentially not legitimate high risk of trafficking.
“What was most interesting about this review was that we included cases that the national team determined were not intercepts, and the external review said they believed they were—which shows the high standards of our partners when it comes to verification too,” said Briony Fickling, LJI’s Senior Director of Anti-Trafficking.
The verification process continues to develop as we expand and grow, becoming even more accurate and precise as more people get involved as stakeholders.
We care about making a real difference!
The bottom line in all of this is that we want you to know that every impact number we report is meticulously tested and held to a high standard. We care deeply about making a real difference that goes beyond good intentions, being responsible with every dollar given, and ensuring that our impact is not overestimated.
When you give, you can have full confidence that your money is truly making a huge impact in the fight against human trafficking. It currently costs us less than $150 to intercept one person, protecting them from the very real and imminent threat of being trafficked.
Give today at the button below to make an impact with us!
*All data and statistics current at the date and time of publishing. Names changed and some specific locations excluded for privacy and security purposes. Photos representative and do not feature actual victims, and AI used to make some images.
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