Funding Frustration

Abstract

Chapter 7 follows Japan’s human trafficking victim assistance and protection program to the Philippines to consider the frustration of grassroots NGO workers there with a reintegration project for trafficking survivors funded by the Japanese government and administered by the International Labour Organization (ILO). It considers how the subcontracting relationships that structured this grant disempowered NGO staff while ostensibly supporting them. It argues that the restrictive protocols of available grants, such as funding constraints and accounting requirements, set aside the priorities and commitments of NGOs, ultimately channeling resources toward international organization and centralized-government agendas. Moreover, not only does the institutional structure of these efforts ignore NGO caseworkers’ insight and expertise, which are based on years of assisting migrants, but it also ultimately pushes some of these caseworkers out of the movement at the cost of losing their experience, knowledge, and perspectives altogether.