The Human Trafficking Research Initiative (HTRI) is a five-year program funded by the Program to End Modern Slavery (PEMS) at the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) and implemented by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). HTRI seeks to expand the evidence on the primary drivers of human trafficking and the most effective ways to prevent this pervasive problem. HTRI has developed this research and learning agenda to guide the project’s research and policy efforts by:

• Identifying inefficiencies and critical evidence gaps hindering the success of international anti-human trafficking initiatives;
• Providing information and evidence to guide HTRI’s grant-making selection process;
• Shaping HTRI’s knowledge management and policy change agenda through new knowledge and data gathered from HTRI-funded research.

This document outlines the current priority research questions and working analytic framework to promote analysis of programs spanning the "4Ps" framework of human trafficking initiatives: prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnership. HTRI will use this research and learning agenda to guide the development and selection of exploratory and pilot grants as well as full-scale impact evaluations/randomized controlled trials. The HTRI research will likely take place in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) or in high-income countries if the intervention in question serves individuals from low- and middle-income countries, but lessons from research findings will impact a wide variety of anti-trafficking initiatives. Given PEMS investments in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guinea, India, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Vietnam, HTRI will pay special attention to anti-trafficking work that benefits the people of the listed countries. 

Please write to the HTRI team with any questions.