Research knowledge base for GBV questions, methods, and service pathways
This is now a research knowledge base rather than a simple FAQ. Search across the published corpus, filter by research lens, and move directly into the source material behind each answer.
Published entries
210
Curated answers grounded in public South African GBV, justice, and support sources.
Visible now
7
Entries matching your current search, lens, and source filters.
Source sets
49
Each answer stays tied to a public source so researchers can verify context.
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Research lenses
Filter the knowledge base the way researchers work
Move between methods, service pathways, risk factors, legal process, survivor support, and data interpretation without losing source traceability.
Methods
Study design, methodology, definitions, and how the evidence was assembled.
Service pathways
How people move through hospitals, police, shelters, courts, and referral systems.
Risk factors
Drivers of violence, vulnerability, exposure, and intersectional risk patterns.
Legal process
Rights, reporting, police procedure, court process, and legal protections.
Survivor support
Healing, counselling, trauma-informed support, and practical care for survivors.
Data interpretation
Limits, caveats, bias, and guidance for reading the evidence responsibly.
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Research lens
Methods
1 entryStudy design, methodology, definitions, and how the evidence was assembled.
UNODC cautions that international trafficking figures only reflect victims who came into contact with authorities and were detected. Hidden exploitation is far larger, so low detection should never be mistaken for low prevalence.
Research lens
Risk factors
4 entriesDrivers of violence, vulnerability, exposure, and intersectional risk patterns.
Human trafficking is the recruitment, transport, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of a person through coercion, deception, force, abuse of vulnerability, or similar means for the purpose of exploitation. It is a crime that can affect people of any gender, age, or background.
UNODC says traffickers target people in difficult or marginalised circumstances, including undocumented migrants, people desperate for work, children from extremely poor households, and people with little protection or support. Vulnerability, not weakness, is what traffickers exploit.
UNODC lists sexual exploitation, forced labour, forced criminal activity, forced marriage, begging, organ removal, and other exploitative practices. This is useful in GBV work because trafficking can overlap with sexual violence, coercive control, and abuse inside homes or workplaces.
UNODC says traffickers use technology across the whole chain, including recruitment through social media, fake job ads, deception, and profit movement. This matters because a seemingly ordinary online message, advert, or romance approach can become part of exploitation.
Research lens
Legal process
2 entriesRights, reporting, police procedure, court process, and legal protections.
Trafficking is defined by exploitation, while migrant smuggling is defined by facilitating illegal border crossing and does not necessarily include exploitation. The two can overlap in real life, but they are not the same offence and should not be treated as interchangeable.
No. UNODC explains that consent is irrelevant where force, deception, coercion, or abuse of vulnerability has been used. For children, consent is irrelevant regardless of whether those means can be shown.