REPORTING MISUSE OF OUR WEBSITE

Something terrible happened to me this weekend. I watched Made in Chelsea, and against all my better judgment, I enjoyed it. This (somehow) Bafta-winning structured reality show follows the lives of “real”, seemingly unemployed high-fliers in South West London as they go for endless cocktails and talk about love and, er… that’s it.

First impressions: why was Louise ever with Spencer? Why does anyone like Jamie? Why do they insist on calling each other “boi”?

Second impressions: anyone watching this who doesn’t realise it’s completely made up must get a very strange impression of life in Chelsea. I’ve been there, and people do seem to have jobs, in the main. Having said that, Chelsea has always been synonymous with affluence and sophistication – certainly nothing as shocking or dirty as human trafficking.

And yet, here we have a story about six arrests and nine rescued women, following raids at 13 addresses including some in affluent, sophisticated Chelsea. To anyone who still turns a blind eye to the idea that a leafy, middle-class neighbourhood could harbour such horrors, this should be a wake-up call.

This raid was the first that took place under the European Communities Against Trafficking (ECAT) Project, of which STOP THE TRAFFIK is a key partner. This two-year project aims to bring agencies and countries together across Europe to raise awareness of and fight human trafficking.

Our role is to work in the London Boroughs of the City of Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea, to mobilise the communities and get people talking about this issue so that’s it out in the open. We are looking for volunteers who are looking to learn about trafficking and teach others, and we are putting on a Community Roadshow on 22^nd June – if you’re keen see here.

The important message to take home from this story though, is this: “Don’t be oblivious.” Just because a neighbourhood looks nice and well-off, that is absolutely no guarantee that it is free of trafficking. We need to start conversations in the home and at our workplaces, so that everyone can be aware.

Maybe the Made In Chelsea cast could take the lead? I can’t imagine that conversation going down too well with the producers.

“Mate, I literally slept with a prostitute last night.”

“Lad! Epic.”

“She told me she was promised work as a receptionist in London, but that when she got here her documents were confiscated and she was forced to work as a prostitute under the threat that her family would be targeted if she refused.”

*Awkward pause*

“Bro, that’s heavy.”

On Friday evening, four members of the STOP THE TRAFFIK team in London attended a preview screening of a documentary made for Channel 4 entitled “The Hunt for Britain’s Sex Gangs”. In short, it was powerful, enthralling and absolutely vital viewing. It’s out on Channel 4 next Thursday 23^rd May at 9 p.m.: don’t miss it.

It is above all a brave piece of film-making. When director Anna Hall was granted access to the police investigation into child trafficking and sex abuse in the Telford area, she had no idea if the footage she was taking would ever be used. It was only after the conviction of seven men last October that the documentary team knew their work wasn’t in vain.

If you’re struggling to recall this case, it might jog your memory if I mention the ‘Asian grooming case’ or the ‘Asian gang’, as the traffickers have been referred to by various streams of media. The issue of race has overshadowed the alarming and serious issue that widespread child trafficking was going on for years in a UK community.

The media can be partly blamed for this. On one side there are papers that have latched onto the race issue to sell copies. A Google search for “Telford Asian gang” returns six times as many hits as “Telford trafficking case”.

The use of the word “Asian” is a dangerous misnomer, by the way, as the convicted men were British-born Pakistanis. Since when did these two mean the same thing?

On the other side, the more liberal media have studiously avoided the subject, preferring not to mention the R-word for fear of igniting controversy. In doing so, however, they offer no response to those who say that this crime was racially motivated. Channel 4 postponed the release of the second documentary in Hall’s series, “Britain’s Sex Gangs”, in case it caused race riots. When it was finally screened, no riots were forthcoming.

Well, here’s my response, and if you don’t mind I’m going to borrow a phrase from maths: correlation does not imply causation. In other words, just because the perpetrators were of one race, and the victims of another, it does not mean that the crime was racially motivated.

The crime was motivated, as all cases of human trafficking are, firstly by money, and secondly by power. By admission of the traffickers, the girls they targeted were chosen because they were believed to be the easiest to groom. It was purely a business decision based on maximising profit – that doesn’t sound much like a race crime to me.

If that line of reasoning isn’t enough, we could always turn to actual statistical evidence. The Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Human Trafficking produced a report on trafficking in October 2012, which included a breakdown of Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) involved in human trafficking in the UK by nationality.

Out of the 92 identified in 2012, 1 was Pakistani. 11 were British. 19 were “Asian”, and 52 were European. With at least 19 different nationalities represented by the identified OCGs, you can’t get much clearer evidence that this is not a racial issue.

So what are the important lessons from this case? One key element of the trial stuck out for me. A piece of legislation adopted from the Palermo Protocol was used by the police to show that, because the girls were children who had been trafficked, they could not legally consent to any sexual activity. This allowed them to pin convictions on the traffickers, and should serve as a landmark case for future prosecutions.

Secondly, education is key. All young girls must be aware that grooming occurs, that under no circumstances should they be expected to perform sexual acts on strangers, and how to stay safe and keep their friends safe from these perils.

Human trafficking is a crime that transcends ethnicity, gender and class. It is a pervasive evil that exists anywhere where there is money to be made. We cannot let issues of race or religion cloud what is really important – communities must look within themselves, and must look out for each other, to eradicate this crime.

Last week our CEO Ruth had the honour of travelling to Hamburg to speak at the 34^th Kirchentag. This is a five-day gathering of Christians of all ages and backgrounds to discuss burning and important topics of the day.

Ruth sat on two panel discussions, one on human trafficking and the other more specifically on sex trafficking, an area which attracts much attention in Germany. She joined among others an MP, directors of anti-human trafficking charities working in Germany, and the chair of the Theological Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance – a man with three PhDs!

The discussion was very fruitful, and Ruth came back to the office today full of enthusiasm for the anti-trafficking movement in Germany and potential for expanding STOP THE TRAFFIK’s work over there.

With over 130,000 people passing through the Kirchentag, including 4,000 international visitors, it was a fantastic opportunity to meet others working to combat trafficking and strengthen our anti-trafficking network across the continent.

So if you’re in Germany and you’re passionate about fighting this global crime, like we are, then we are here to provide you with the tools to do so. We’re excited to start our anti-traffik fight in Germany, and if you are too, please get in touch with us on info@stopthetraffik.org, or via Facebook.

I think to some extent we all know what we’re doing when we shop at bargain stores. People talk about the “guilt” of stepping into a Primark or Walmart, because we know that things shouldn’t be that cheap. We know that something’s gone wrong somewhere along the line.

The trouble is, it’s often not that obvious who is losing out. Some factory worker in some third-world country. While browsing in Primark, if you were ever to stop and think about that faceless person, you’d probably be distracted by a £3 t-shirt and move on with your life.

Occasionally, but not occasionally enough, something happens which dumps that worker right into your life. 386 workers, to be precise, if you don’t count the 900 who are still unaccounted for. I’m talking, of course, about the horrific building collapse in Dhaka which has led to the death of hundreds of Bangladeshi garment-makers – but I could easily talk about the 289 who died in Karachi, Pakistan, or the 117 in Tazreen, all within the past year.

Corporate Responsibility

While Primark and Walmart are not the only corporations implicated in these disasters, I’ve singled them out because of their direct involvement in the two most recent accidents. Primark occupied a floor of the Dhaka factory, and for their part they have agreed to pay compensation to the people affected by this tragedy.

Walmart, however, claimed that their supplier had sub-contracted the work to the Tazreen factory, in the outskirts of Dhaka, without their knowledge and refused to pay compensation. So, men, women and children who worked all hours of the day to earn barely enough money to feed their families were left with traumatic injuries and no money to feed their families.

Both companies have also drawn the line at introducing better safety measures by signing the Bangladesh Fire and Safety Agreement. Why? Because it’s too costly, according to Walmart. And yet: “We firmly believe factory owners must meet our standards for suppliers and we recognise the cost of meeting those standards will be part of the cost of the goods we buy,” said a Walmart spokesman.

By the way, let’s not forget that Michael Duke, Walmart’s CEO, awarded himself an $18.1 million salary last year. That would be enough to pay the families of the deceased 198 years’ wages each.

Denial

See, when a tragedy like this comes around, denial is the first defence. The issue is “complex”. If unsafe sweatshops didn’t exist, these people would have no jobs. Bangladesh’s cheap labour must go hand in hand with lax safety regulations if corporations are to keep their prices down.

Not true. The Worker’s Rights Consortium has put together a report that the cost of bringing 4,500 factories across Bangladesh up to Western safety standards would translate to around 6p per garment. Six pence.

Of course, this would only be true if every Western clothes shop were on board, and that isn’t going to happen while giants like Walmart and Primark believe that their “unique selling point” requires them to trample factory workers’ rights underfoot.

Forced Labour

One of the reasons for the high death toll in these accidents is that doors and windows were locked to prevent workers from escaping. This doesn’t sit well with the notion of workers’ rights, and brings up the question of how many people in the factory were there out of choice.

I guess we’ll never know how many of the dead had been trafficked into Dhaka, or lured in with the false promise of a good job. What we do know, from the US State Department’s Trafficking In Persons Report 2012, is that trafficking from rural areas to cities for forced labour is common in Bangladesh. We also know that at least one per cent of Pakistan’s population are currently in bonded labour.

Put these facts together, and we are facing the sickening situation that hundreds of people, after being forced to work in unbearable conditions for years, were crushed or burned to death because some corporation didn’t want to pay for fire escapes. And why is that? So that we could save 6p.

What can be done, then? As we always say here at STOP THE TRAFFIK, independent certification is a crucial first step. It is working for chocolate, and it can work for cotton. Add in consumer choice and you have a powerful combination. We mustn’t forget this terrible tragedy; we must use our voice and vote with our money to remind corporations that forced labour anywhere in the world is unacceptable. They cannot be allowed to forget this.

As anyone who works for a charity will tell you, one of the most important parts of our work is creating networks. To me as a student, “networking” was a dirty word, and networking events were attended only by smug people who wanted to tell everyone how great they are.

I did go once, to a law networking event, because my friend told me there was free cheese. I managed to embarrass myself in front of any prospective employers by displaying my ignorance of the law (I was a maths undergrad, to be fair). The cheese was delicious, though.

It turns out, though, that networking in the real world is an incredibly useful tool, and without it, a charity’s work would be so much harder. Networking is not about free cheese, it’s about making links with like-minded people and spreading your word without spending lots of money.

STOP THE TRAFFIK is lucky enough to work with many partners who allow us to focus on what we do best: enabling and empowering communities to stop trafficking. This means we don’t have to spend time or money doing the things we’re not trained to do.

One organisation we work with is Advocates for International Development (A4ID), who draw on their extensive network of lawyers around the world to provide pro bono (literally meaning “for a good cause”) legal advice to those who need it. Their main focus is the UN Millennium Development goals, and they support charities who work in any of the areas covered by them.

A4ID have worked with us a number of times, including advising us on legal issues surrounding our website and campaigns, and drawing up a joint venture agreement when working on a project with multiple partners.

Legal advice can be costly, but the cost of not taking legal advice can be even higher. That we have access to these services for free – pro bono work is done without compensation – is a great support for us.

Another such organisation is Leagas Delaney, a creative agency who do lots of creative stuff and have genius ideas to engage people in our work. Again, this is something that can be expensive for small charities, and our partnership has led to some of our best campaigns.

We’d like to give a big STOP THE TRAFFIK “thank you!” to A4ID and Leagas Delaney, and to all organisations who work with charities like they do. By providing their brilliant expertise, large organisations can make such a difference, not only to us, but to people suffering from injustice across the world.

If you want to learn more about these organisations, visit their websites at www.a4id.org and http://www.leagasdelaney.co.uk/.