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What’s the Mission? Discursive Power and Human Rights–Based Language in Anti-Trafficking Organizations

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Abstract

One of the ways individuals or groups in power preserve their power is through the vehicle of language. As such, the message that an organization sends regarding its mission, vision, values, and or goals is just as important as the actual services with which it provides. Nowhere is this truer than within the realm of anti-trafficking service provision. Through content analysis of the mission, goal, vision, and value statements of 162 organizations who are funded to combat human trafficking, the research team examined how organization statements articulate a human rights–based approach. The study findings were that organizations who further the primacy of rights did it in four distinct ways: advocating for human rights seeing human rights as something survivors lack empowering survivors and viewing survivors as rights-holders. However, overall, there is still an under-utilization of human rights as a framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ethnic Studies Division, School for Cultural & Social Transformation, University of Utah, 260 Central Campus Drive, Gardner Commons 4218, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA

    Annie Isabel Fukushima

  2. Department of Social Work, The College at Brockport, SUNY, Brockport, NY, 14420, USA

    Kristin Heffernan

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  1. Annie Isabel Fukushima
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  2. Kristin Heffernan
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Correspondence to Annie Isabel Fukushima.

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Institutional Review Boards for human subjects protect the human subject. This study did not rely on working with humans—only working on textual analysis—and organizations are not considered human subjects; therefore, this study was exempt from the Institutional Review Board process.

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Fukushima, A.I., Heffernan, K. What’s the Mission? Discursive Power and Human Rights–Based Language in Anti-Trafficking Organizations. J. Hum. Rights Soc. Work 5, 129–138 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-019-00109-w

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