History and Purpose
Executive Director Dr Carrie Pemberton Ford instituted the work of the Centre following the UN GIFT conference of 2007 when it became clear to her that there needed to be the development of interconnecting hubs of research and applied practitioner knowledge at a Global level. In 2018 CCARHT became a Not for Profit, Community Interest Company, committed to raising the capacity of the NGO sector, and Policy practice, through harnessing the power of the academy to reflect on the manifold elements of Human Trafficking.
CCARHT is engaged in a sustained applied academic conversation, in research, publications, media products, and in the power of symposia and teaching events, to understand the dynamics and impacts of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery and assist in its fundamental disruption.
CCARHT explores through research undertaken by its Directors, Research Associates, and International Advisory Board members and those who partake in its annual Summer Symposium inter alia: the methodologies being deployed to fight against its presence by governments and law enforcement practitioners across the world, a deeper understanding of methods of disruption and dismantling harmful systems deployed in the past, seeking wisdom for the present sustained attention to the capacity of whole systems thinking, and the goods of the fourth technological revolution to unleash new tools in the struggle against THB.
The human costs of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery and the challenge to restore full dignity and onward flourishing for those impacted by such exploitation inter-disciplinary tools to enable insights to flow across frequently siloed fields of academic enquiry – International Relations, Human Rights and Criminal law, Social Psychology, Archaeology, Engineering, Computer Science, Neurology, Business and Entrepreneurial Studies, Development Studies.
Sponsors a range of bespoke studies, looking at specific arenas of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery activities, in order to understand its full impact on the lives affected, and the methods deployed by Traffickers in arbitraging the ‘opportunities’ for trafficking ‘investment’.
The forum which Dr Pemberton Ford established provided one third of the UK’s capacity to house survivors of trafficking abuse, now has one of its early members taking the lead for the UK government’s contract on safe house provision for other forms of trafficking, including domestic servitude, forced labour and sexual exploitation.
See Phase one and Phase two of the work which lay behind the emergence of CCARHT CIC and its current Board of Directors.