Over the past year, Eleison has worked alongside the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab and the International Justice Mission (IJM) on a new research study, the Scale of People’s Reliance: A Baseline Study on Vulnerable People’s Reliance on the Philippine Criminal Justice System for Protection against Online Sexual Exploitation of Children (OSEC). This project strives to understand how people rely on public justice systems to seek help from OSEC in the Philippines, exploring the effectiveness of systems for documenting, reporting, and processing OSEC cases. The study aims to identify any gaps in services for OSEC survivors, consolidating a series of recommendations from community stakeholders for how public justice systems can more effectively address the needs of children and communities vulnerable to OSEC.
Eleison led the qualitative data collection for this project, officially completing all data collection in May 2026. Data collection was conducted across three sites: Cebu, Manila, and Mindanao. We completed 30 key informant interviews (KIIs) with community stakeholders in the public justice system, such as social workers, law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and local government officials. Additionally, we facilitated six focus group discussions (FDGs) with OSEC survivors to understand their perspectives on community trust in justice systems and survivors’ recommendations for making justice systems work more effectively for impacted communities. We are currently collaborating with our partners at the Rights Lab on qualitative data analysis.
Following the conclusion of the data analysis, preliminary findings will be presented during multiple community validation workshops across the three study sites in the Philippines. Validation workshops will provide opportunities for justice system representatives and survivors to share feedback on preliminary results, helping to refine findings, recommendations, and subsequent action steps. The completed study will include guidance for strengthening existing processes to become more survivor-oriented, trauma-informed, and responsive to the needs of vulnerable communities.
