Reducing Forced Labor in Costa Rica’s Fishing Industry

Costa Rica is a destination and passageway for migration and has a decentralized and unregulated fishing industry, and so has a high risk of labor trafficking and exploitation of fishing labor. With U.S. State Department funding, Research Professor Meredith Dank, Sheldon Zhang (UMass-Lowell), and a team from the International Organization for Migration are studying the scale and characteristics of labor trafficking unique to the fishing industry and are working to improve identification and protection of possible trafficking victims through enhanced capacity to identify and refer, cooperation at the local level, and prevention campaigns.