Awaz Bano - Campaign on Trafficking in Person

Campaign Overview

‍Launched in July 2026 by the Centre for Human Rights (CFHR), #AwaazBano (Become a Voice) was a two-phase digital campaign designed to combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) and Smuggling of Migrants (SOM) through public awareness, myth-busting, and legal education. Targeting youth and the general public, the campaign sought to bridge critical knowledge gaps, counter online misinformation, and provide accessible information on reporting mechanisms and survivor protections.

The campaign concluded on 31 August 2026, generating nearly half a million interactions and significantly surpassing its initial reach targets. By combining survivor storytelling with practical safety and legal information, #AwaazBano successfully grounded its messaging in real, human experiences while addressing the systemic issues that enable exploitation.

Phase I: Understanding Trafficking and Exploitation

Launch Date: 14 July 2026

Phase I built foundational awareness of what trafficking is, its exploitation indicators, and available protections, while countering online misinformation by pairing common myths with relevant facts. Content combined survivor storytelling with practical safety information, featuring a survivor's lived experience to ground the campaign in a real, human story.

Key Highlights:

• Interactive Poll: Asked whether audiences had ever received a job offer that felt too good to be true, 57% said yes—underscoring how widespread deceptive job offers are as a recruitment tactic.
• Most Saved Posts: The survivor story, "What do most people get wrong about human trafficking?" and "What is human trafficking?" These saves reveal clear audience needs: a better understanding of what trafficking entails, tools to build resilience against it, and relatable content sharing survivors' lived experiences.

Phase II: Legal Awareness and Rights

Launch Date: 12 August 2026

Phase II targeted legal awareness on TIP and SOM for the general public and youth, developed in collaboration with legal content creator Mehaklaw through 5 short Instagram reels.

Key Highlights:

• Clarifying the Law: Reels distinguished between TIP and SOM, recognizing them as individual legal rights in Pakistan, and provided clarity for relevant agents interlinked with both smuggling and trafficking.
• Emerging Concerns: Content addressed recent concerns around scam centers and the protection of survivors of TIP.
• Bonded Labour: The campaign recognized bonded labour as a key form of trafficking that is both common and often missed in national discourse.

Reach and Impact

The #AwaazBano campaign generated nearly half a million interactions across both phases, significantly surpassing its initial target of 100,000 accounts. This was achieved predominantly free of cost, with no dedicated marketing budget allocated under the program and costs limited to social media personnel.

The response was overwhelming, with numerous requests for support and comments emphasizing the need for such narratives, discourse, and information on TIP and related harms. In a powerful testament to the campaign's necessity, survivors of trafficking reached out to CFHR to share that limited discourse on this topic had contributed to their vulnerability towards trafficking.

Audience Insights:

• Instagram: Resonated strongly with women (70.8% vs. 29.2% men), primarily ages 25–34 (58.2%), followed by 18–24 (21.1%) and 35–44 (14.1%).
• Facebook: Engagement varied by content type. Educational posts and survivor stories attracted a predominantly male audience (75–80%), while posts on practical warning signs and specific trafficking types saw higher engagement from women (50–75%).
• Geography: While 84.6% of viewers were based in Pakistan, engagement also came from the UK, USA, Canada, and India, likely due to convergence with the International Trafficking of Persons Day 2026.

Top Saved Posts: The most-saved content on Instagram—the survivor story, "What do most people get wrong about human trafficking?" and "What is human trafficking?"—revealed clear audience priorities: a deeper understanding of what trafficking entails, tools to build individual and collective resilience, and relatable content sharing survivors' lived experiences.