Legal Services Play Critical Role in SEED’s Support for Trafficking Survivors Navigating the legal system is often a complicated and lengthy process for victims, or survivors, of human trafficking. It is common in Kurdistan for them to face criminal charges instead of being recognized as survivors, leading to further exploitation or abuse. Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

For families with children who have special needs, it can be challenging for both the family and the children to receive the support and resources they need in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In the last two years, SEED has worked with two families from the host community who have children that are diagnosed with Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

SEED supports clients from diverse backgrounds and is dedicated to taking a client-centered approach, ensuring each individual’s needs are met. Maureen, a 38-year-old woman from Tanzania, was placed in a household in Sulaimani, Kurdistan, as a domestic worker. After nearly a year, Maureen was forced to work longer hours than agreed upon, denied freedom of Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Shelter-in-place orders, restricted movements and government closures, necessary measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 in Kurdistan, have resulted in a financial crisis leaving many migrant workers unemployed, and with compromised legal status as work permits expired. International travel bans meant those undertaking domestic work were unable to return to their home countries, and Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

SEED continuously strives to strengthen its services to meet the needs of the communities it serves. One of the gaps that was identified was the need for a specialized group response to benefit from support of peers with similar challenges. This need could be addressed by launching an adapted version of group therapy for camp Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Jasmine*,26, like many migrant workers who become victims of trafficking, believed she was coming to Kurdistan via an employment agency to work and provide a better life for her family in Sierra Leone. Little did Jasmine know, she would set legal precedent by becoming the first mother to obtain a birth certificate for her child Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

“There’s nothing to do after school, and we want more activities to do. Especially soccer,” explained a teenage boy.  It was a cloudless Monday in chilly February with the sunshine filtering into a room accompanied by sounds of children playing outside. Six teenage boys sat in a neat circle on beige plastic chairs, some leaning Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

A mother brought her son Ary*, three years old, to SEED’s facilities in a local public health clinic in Erbil, seeking help for her son’s aggressive behavior and describing it as abnormal for his age; he was needy, aggressive, always crying, and hurting others around him with knives. Ary had a lack of focus and Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.