Working with Nigeria’s National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons to enhance operational outcomes
ARK has been engaged by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to help Nigeria’s National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) utilise strategic communications to enhance its operational outcomes. The assumption behind such programmes of bilateral support is often that there is best practice to be imparted, that one partner has greater understanding and expertise. Our most recent engagement with NAPTIP gives me empirical reasons to challenge that assumption and to propose a slightly different approach.
In advance of this recent workshop organised with NAPTIP in Abuja, I read through the International Commission on Aid Impact’s (ICAI) 2020 evaluation of UK work in the field of modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT). The full report can be read here icai-report-the-uk-s-approach-to-tackling-modern-slavery-through-the-aid-programme.pdf (antislaverycommissioner.co.uk). It concludes, having evaluated the impact of over £200m spent on MSHT that ‘there has been no demonstration of impact or value for money to date and we are concerned that the portfolio as currently configured is not well set up to deliver robust evidence on 'what works' or future impact’. In relation to the programmes delivered, these ‘lacked clear theories of change or outcome-level indicators for its plethora of small projects. A failure to articulate clear causal pathways and identify measurable outcome indicators has meant that the capacity of these programmes to generate useful results data has been weak’. In relation to the impact of strategic communications campaigns themselves, a specific example is examined from Nigeria, the ‘Not for Sale’ campaign. Whilst noting this was highly successful as an advertising campaign, ‘the underlying premise of the campaign, however, is that awareness raising can reduce irregular migration and trafficking. Studies suggest that, even if such campaigns increase knowledge, they do not reduce trafficking because abuses are often beyond the control of any individual’s own decision-making’. The report went on to conclude that international donor support tended to focus on donor interests (international trafficking) rather than addressing major problems of domestic servitude, internal trafficking and child labour.
As such when we started our engagement with NAPTIP, we consciously adopted a co-creation approach that places the needs and operational constraints/realities but also clear expertise of NAPTIP personnel at the heart of the discussion about how to proceed. We have discussed planning tools, comparative examples and lessons identified elsewhere (including the ICAI report’s conclusions in Nigeria which NAPTIP were unaware of) but when it came to the design of proposed communications interventions, all the initiative sits with our Nigerian colleagues. The result? Well, it is early days but we have some truly innovative approaches generated from within the NAPTIP team which simply could not have been conceptualised externally. We look forward to next steps in this demand-led processes and reporting on the impact of campaigns designed by, with and for Nigerians.
