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The Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice is a thought leader in the effort to address forced labour worldwide. We support community partners addressing modern slavery internationally and in the UK through our research, clinics, and consultation. 

The Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice has developed a significant strength in community-based research and collaboration on modern slavery and human trafficking. Our staff work on projects around the globe, tackling the issue of forced labour with a community-based, human rights approach. We conduct applied research, provide legal counsel and advocacy services, train communities, produce guidance, and provide subject matter expertise for a vast array of stakeholders including, legislatures and government agencies, advocacy groups, international non-profits, police departments, and corporations. Our team has diverse expertise in the area, with strengths in the areas of child trafficking, asylum and refugees advocacy, survivor testimony, forensic interviewing, migration, gender-based violence, policing, and international forced labour.

Some of our recent projects include

• collaborating with local authorities across the UK to assess their response to child trafficking;
• collaborating with the government of Scotland to create a guardianship pilot for supporting separated children, many of whom had been trafficked;
• supporting the development of modern slavery data collaborations in South Yorkshire and the East Midlands.
• conducting an analysis of a joint human trafficking investigation led by South Yorkshire and Latvian police;
• conducting research on forced labour in the Uyghur region of China, for use by advocates, governments, and corporations;
• conducting a study of Indian labourers who revolted against the landowners who held them in debt bondage for generations;
• researching sex and labour trafficking among homeless youth in ten cities across the United States and Canada;
• creating guidance for U.S. homeless youth serving organizations about how to assist youth who have been trafficked;
• conducting a systematic review of the literature on European, American, UK, and Canadian health systems approaches to trafficking for the World Health Organization;
• conducting a quality of life survey with survivors of human trafficking in the US;
• providing oral evidence and subject matter expertise to Scottish trafficking enquiry led by Baroness Helena Kennedy and at high level government strategy groups in Scotland and UK;
• consulting for ECPAT UK and leading a Home Office funded project working directly with selected Local Authorities analysing their response to both  in and out of country child trafficking.