Trafficking and Exploitation Strategy 2025: Fairer Scotland Duty Assessment

Summary of assessment findings

The stakeholder review of the existing strategy, the analysis of the available evidence on taking a public health approach to trafficking, and the lived experience perspectives in the development of the strategy and the upcoming delivery plan, have improved the strategy in several ways.

The Strategy is focused on addressing inequalities experienced by those who have been trafficked and exploited and who constitute a highly disadvantaged group, as well as seeking to prevent exploitation from occurring in the first place. The strategy therefore needs to be implemented alongside many other policy approaches, including but not limited to:

• preventing and eradicating Violence Against Women and Girls
• promoting the welfare and rights of children in Scotland
• integrating refugees and people seeking asylum into Scotland’s communities
• ending destitution and homelessness.

The findings of the assessment also suggest that in order for the Strategy to assist those affected by exploitation and trafficking, it needs to be firmly rooted in the experiences of victims of trafficking and exploitation. Exploitation and trafficking affects individuals and groups in different ways and it is important that every victim is supported in Scotland. To this end we have taken the perspectives of survivors and service providers who support them into account to develop, adjust and renew the outcomes of the Strategy.

The findings suggest that being exposed to certain harms and risks can make adults and children more vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. The type of harm to which they may be exposed may be psychological, physical, environmental or structural. Structural and environmental factors that increase the risk of trafficking and exploitation include poverty, conflict and instability, organised crime networks, lack of opportunities, and gender inequality.

Social and family factors can include domestic violence, socioeconomic conditions, parental substance use and family debt. Individual factors that increase vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation include substance misuse, homelessness, unstable employment or education, having no recourse to public funds, being care experienced, mental ill-health, not being able to communicate using the dominant language and disability, amongst others. Some of these risk factors can also be symptoms of and ways of coping with the trauma and distress experienced by individuals who have been exploited and trafficked. Technology-facilitated enablers of exploitation, such as the use of social media, contribute to increased risk. A lack of access to fair and sustainable employment is an additional risk factor which expose some individuals or groups to increased risk of exploitation.

The Strategy seeks to address these risk factors through taking a public health approach which seeks to prevent human trafficking and exploitation in Scotland and to respond effectively when it does occur. This is done by providing a clear framework, informed by survivor voices and data, through which our anti-trafficking interventions will be delivered.

Specifically, the Strategy will use the following mechanisms to address the risk factors:

Primary prevention: preventing trafficking and exploitation before it occurs. This involves programmes and interventions designed to reduce factors that put people at risk of experiencing or perpetrating trafficking.

Secondary prevention: providing an immediate response to trafficking and exploitation after it occurs through addressing short-term consequences and effects. Programmes and interventions focus on the identification of victims and their immediate needs such as safe housing, health care (physical and mental) and other forms of support alongside the disruption and prosecution of perpetrators.

Tertiary prevention: providing long-term support after the trafficking and exploitation has occurred and prevents retrafficking from occurring. Programmes and interventions include long-term supportive services, advocacy and outcomes as well as other services aimed at mitigating long-term impacts and retrafficking, and facilitating community reintegration.

Perpetrators of trafficking and exploitation are constantly seeking new ways of coercing or forcing those at risk into exploitative activities. Horizon scanning – where new trends and emerging threats are identified early - has been included as an important component of the revised Strategy so that those who are more at risk are protected.

The Strategy has taken into account the findings of the assessment through incorporation into the revised outcomes.

Sign off

Name: Anna Donald

Job title: Deputy Director, Criminal Justice Division

Date: 28 July 2025