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People Seeking Services
Financial Support
Necessities
To understand whether COVID-19 had impacted people seeking assistance and support, survey participants were asked, ‘Has there been a change in the number of people seeking services?’ More than half of participants had seen an increase in people seeking services (55%) whilst 27% claimed there was no change and 17% had seen a decrease.
Several survey participants indicated there was an increase in people seeking financial assistance possibly due to many losing their jobs and lack of economic stability.
Basic necessities were also another form of support identified by survey participants - people were in need of things like food and medication. One survey participant stated: “Brothels are in complete lockdown in Bangladesh. Women who live in the brothels are requiring increase of food, hygiene and medicine.” Another participant indicated that “people are coming from the community and asking for help and other types of support including rent, food and psychosocial support”. Some participants also mentioned people were seeking shelter support. Several interview participants expressed that their focus had shifted slightly to responding to COVID-19 within the community. A few organisations were able to receive additional funding to support their COVID-19 response:
“We did get funding from government who fund our regular programming quite quickly, which was great; they were very responsive and recognised the needs of our trafficking clients … In Bangladesh the protection team and anti-trafficking team were being offered funding constantly, but we couldn’t spend money because there was nothing we could actually do” (Interview Participant, Australia and Bangladesh). Others indicated the difficulty in receiving funds and resources, given that there has been a shift in response as a result of COVID-19:
“We couldn’t get support, every government attention [is] going to COVID-19 eradication so they couldn’t support [us]. Thank God for some development partners who actually came to [our] aid, who realised that, no, the victims of trafficking [also] need support” (Interview Participant, Nigeria).
“Donor X gave us a million bars of soap that we distributed [with] messaging about the importance of handwashing … [We got a cash donation from Donor Y] and we’re using that to assist government workers in Yangon, because they’re migrants, they often live in factory-provided dormitory accommodation and so once the factories stop working and they’re not being paid … [our garment sector project has also received additional money for COVID-19 response]” (Interview Participant, Myanmar).
Photo by Imad Alassiry on Unsplash
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