ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan — At the Kurdistan Regional Government’s newly minted trafficking in persons unit, three Ghanaian women sit in a reception area toying with their mobile phones. Their faces light up when a tall young man walks in. Karwan — he asks that his full name be withheld because of the sensitive nature of his work — is a member of SEED, a local nongovernmental organization whose core mission is to empower and protect women, and he is helping the Africans free themselves from abusive employers.

SEED set up Iraqi Kurdistan’s first ever shelter for trafficked men and women in November and the Ghanaians will be housed there until they find new employment or return home.

Many credit SEED’s co-founder Sherri Kraham Talabani for badgering Iraqi Kurdish authorities into establishing the department for combating trafficking in persons in 2018, and which became operational in June 2019.

Since its inception, authorities have blacklisted and shut down at least 38 recruitment agencies, including one belonging to a very big local fish, said Sardar Fadhel Yayha, the youthful police major who heads the unit. “SEED has been instrumental in our work,” Yayha told Al-Monitor during a recent interview at the Erbil headquarters of the Directorate of Combating Human Trafficking, as the outfit is formally known. “The most vulnerable are the Africans.”