Leveraging Digital Technology to Strengthen the Identification Of Victims Of Trafficking In Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Of China (Hong Kong Sar, China)

Elements of Innovation

• Awareness Raising and Communication
• Data, Research and Technology
• Diversity, Gender and Inclusion

What is the project about?

Human trafficking and forced labor are global issues affecting millions of people around the world. This project aims to safeguard the rights of victims of trafficking from various nationalities and employment sectors in Hong Kong SAR, China.

The key objective of this initiative is to ensure that potential victims of trafficking can access protection and advocacy mechanisms that are attuned to gender-specific considerations. This approach enables an environment conducive to women seeking appropriate assistance and protective measures tailored to their needs. Moreover, by leveraging existing tools to expand screenings to vulnerable migrant worker populations beyond the predominantly female domestic workforce, the project holds the distinctive potential to enhance the understanding of diverse stakeholders regarding the factors making male migrant workers susceptible to human trafficking and related forms of exploitation. This effort will not only shape the design of tailored referral mechanisms but also contribute to the reinforcement of protection measures sensitive to gender-related concerns.

How is the project innovative?

The project's innovation lies in its successful adaptation of the Apprise tool, originally developed by the United Nations University Institute in Macau and the Mekong Club to enable secure and confidential interviews of vulnerable populations to identify instances of trafficking in persons. By adopting this cutting-edge technological solution, the initiative harnesses technology to identify and ultimately support migrant workers facing exploitation.

Apprise is a mobile app based on the Value Sensitive Design approach - a theory-based approach to technology design that considers human values in a principled and comprehensive way. It ensures that technology is developed with ethical, social, and cultural considerations. By offering tailored screening questionnaires in multiple languages, the app empowers frontline responders to proactively detect signs of labor exploitation and trafficking among vulnerable migrant workers in various industries. This allows them to evaluate in a standardized, evidence-based and protection-oriented manner the situation of migrant workers within the established legal frameworks, as well as to gather essential and consistent macro data about labor conditions, facilitating comparative analysis across different time periods, locations, and sectors.