JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Human trafficking is a human rights violation in every region of the world. The African continent is not spared. It has dramatic health and social consequences for millions of people each year. International organizations and governments combating human trafficking are hindered by a lack of knowledge about what factors influence domestic (within countries) human trafficking.

Objective:

A scoping review will collate and synthesize literature on factors influencing domestic trafficking.

Methods:

We will follow Arksey and O'Malley’s framework to answer the question about reported influences on domestic human trafficking and their relative weight. The search strategy will explore Pub Med, CINAHL, Web of Science, and SCOPUS. Two independent researchers will select quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods studies that explore relationships influencing domestic human trafficking. We will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Review to document our results. We will extract a list of all reported relationships between identified factors influencing domestic human trafficking in each study. Based on a discourse analysis approach, we will weigh the relationships' strengths based on how frequently they are reported across the included studies. We will summarize the findings as fuzzy cognitive maps depicting the relationships reported in the literature. The maps represent the influences between concepts (nodes) linked by arrows (edges) going from each cause to its outcomes. These maps are helpful visual summaries of the factors associated with domestic human trafficking, allowing a comparison with maps to be created by stakeholder groups.

Results:

The review will identify reported factors influencing domestic human trafficking in Africa. The overlap of human trafficking with other forms of exploitation and issues (migration, refugees, humanitarian crisis, climate change), the limited literature on domestic human trafficking and the likely diversity of factors are challenges for the review. We propose strategies to address these challenges.

Conclusions:

The review will identify reported factors influencing domestic human trafficking in Africa. The overlap of human trafficking with other forms of exploitation and issues (migration, refugees, humanitarian crisis, climate change), the limited literature on domestic human trafficking and the likely diversity of factors are challenges for the review. We propose strategies to address these challenges. Clinical Trial: na