Human Trafficking

In the wake of the 200 year anniversary of the end of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, momentum is growing in publicising the current slave trade, moving people from places of extreme poverty to be sold into forced labour, often prostitution. Scarily there are more slaves around today than there were 200 hundred years ago.

Spring Harvest highlighted in more detail this year the Stop the Traffik campaign but it is good to see that the media is catching on and this topic is being highlighted in the secular world.
Moldova is the poorest European country and there is a BBC news story here and a feature here to promote the Radio 4 programme Crossing Continents which was broadcast last night but is repeated on Monday (you can also Listen Again).
There is additional information on Moldova as a country here and here

There is a human trafficking event at Norwich Cathedral next Wednesday. Details can be found here. (Thanks Carl for the links!)

Stop the Traffik

I have blogged previously on the Stop the Traffik campaign and this month sees the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, cause for celebration indeed. But the selling of people into slavery is the 3rd biggest illegal industry and it would appear to have less of the risks involved than producing, processing and distributing drugs has and its appeal as a trade is growing.
The definition of traffiking (found here) is:

“Trafficking in human beings” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

From the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website (an excellent study resource) here are some snippets of info from this latest report on slavery in the UK:

• UK enforcement agencies estimate there may be as many as 10,000 gangmasters operating across the various industrial sectors. Many operate legally but some do not.
• People are then trafficked by agents into forced labour in such areas as agriculture, construction, cleaning and domestic work, food processing and packaging, care/nursing, hospitality and the restaurant trade, as well as into sexual exploitation.
• Complex sub-contracting and supply chains, managed by agents elsewhere, often obscure the involvement of people trapped in slavery
• The UK has tended to address trafficking as an issue of migration control rather than one of human rights and statutory agency personnel are often unsure how to assist trafficked migrant workers and keep few or no records as to their subsequent well-being.
• Research indicates that although the police see trafficked people as victims, the immigration service sees them as illegal entrants.

Scary stuff. Keep informed and spread the news in the build up to Freedom Day, which is March 25th.