Designers/Illustrators: Hertfordshire needs you!
The indefatigable talents of STOP THE TRAFFIK supporters have never been in doubt. You’ve performed, you’ve drawn, you’ve sung, you’ve painted, you’ve baked, you’ve filmed, you’ve danced. You’ve even taken to writing poetry lately, with equal aplomb. STOP THE TRAFFIK is working alongside Hertfordshire Anti-Trafficking Board to develop a thorough human trafficking awareness campaign across … Read more
‘Have a Heart Nestlé’ Twitter Awards
In the run up to Valentine’s day, people from all over the world used love poems and Valentine’s messages on Twitter to tell Nestlé to ‘Have A Heart’ and put an end to trafficked labour in their supply chains. We thought we’d give some public recognition to the literary genius of STOP THE TRAFFIK supporters … Read more
Global News 08/02/2011
Zimbabwe “They put you on the phone and beat you up while your relatives are listening.” Established, organised criminal gangs specialising in human trafficking, known locally as Omalaitsha, have flourished under President Mugabe. Working in conjunction with the Guma Guma gang, which is described as “a brutal network of border control thugs”, the Omalaitsha traffik … Read more
Will Super Bowl 2011 be the only game in town?
The connection between human trafficking and major sporting events has proved to be a rather moot point over recent years. Unfortunately, much of the heat around the debate has been caused by arguments over statistics, rather than arguments about how best to ensure that there isn’t a connection. Joseph Stalin may not be someone … Read more
Global News 28/01/2011
Indonesia The client looks through the photos and contacts the website administrator when they’ve decided which one they’d like to purchase. It’s the kind of online shopping that happens every second of every day across the internet. But this time it’s different. The website? A Facebook group. The site administrator? A human trafficker. The products … Read more
Global News 19/01/2011
By Simon Butcher Argentina / Holland One of the largest agri-industry companies in the world – the Dutch grain merchant Nidera – has been accused of human trafficking. Argentinean authorities raided a Nidera plantation near Buenos Aires, where 133 seasonal workers, beleived to be trafficking victims, were found to be working in shocking conditions. The company are … Read more
Father and Son Trafficking Team Convicted
Marius Nejloveanu and his father, Bogdan, have been convicted of trafficking 5 women from Romania to Manchester, UK. The victims were originally told that they could earn up to £1000 a month working in a bar. But after arriving in the country, the father and son team forced them into prostitution, making them see up to … Read more
Training the Protectors
By Simon Butcher Heather Nesbitt is a former police officer who has been involved in investigating trafficking cases. She has written candidly for STOP THE TRAFFIK from her own personal experience on why it is so important for those people tasked with protecting trafficking victims to be adequately trained. “My journey started many years ago … Read more
Poverty and Human Trafficking: Myth-Busting
By Simon Butcher Last week, the Institute for Trafficked, Exploited and Missing Persons (ITEMP) published a new report identifying poverty as the root cause of human trafficking. “By finding the roots of the problem, we can begin to look for permanent solutions,” ITEMP Director of Operations Charles Moore said. You can perhaps imagine the scene: … Read more
Global News 13/01/2011
Ohio, US The manager of Starbucks in Cleveland, Ohio said he was unaware of what was going on. Staff swiping a few dollars from the till for themselves? Giving their favourite customers and extra marshmallow? Customers writing graffiti on the toilet door? No – on all three counts. He was unaware that when a man, … Read more
UK Sex Gangs – It’s about cash not culture
The British media could never be accused of shying away from a race row. But if there was ever an instance where bringing race into the equation was entirely unnecessary, unhelpful and unproductive, it’s here. Last week, The Times newspaper featured a leading article examining the increasing number of cases of internal trafficking in parts … Read more
Global News 06/01/2011
France “It feels like we have broken up a completely medieval gang structure.” Those were the words of a clearly quite taken-aback Parisian police chief. A Bosnian man, Fehmi Hamidovic, is believed to be behind this operation which trafficked young girls from the Balkans to the French capital for the purposes of forced begging and … Read more
Football World Cup in Qatar: the trafficking problem
Last month FIFA, the world’s football governing body, announced Qatar as the host country for the 2022 Football World Cup. Across the world the decision was greeted with, at best, a collective raised eyebrow. Qatar’s unique socio-economic makeup makes it a particularly interesting case study for human trafficking. Some quick Qatari facts: – It ranks … Read more
Global News 20/12/2010
China In the shadows of the skyscrapers and shopping malls that mark China’s economic transformation, homelessness is increasingly rife. You’d think that homeless shelters would be integral to tackling this growing problem – but reports from Beijing suggest that one such shelter has been exploiting the very people it claimed to be supporting. 11 residents … Read more
Global News 15/12/2010
Iceland A lot of people have pointed out that the recent publication by WikiLeaks of US Embassy cables doesn’t seem to have told us much we didn’t already know about the world. But there’s no doubting it will give rise to a few rather awkward conversations and several red faces in diplomatic circles. It appears … Read more
Traffik-free Christmas
The whiff of Christmas is certainly hovering in the air: the faint scent of nostalgia, the aroma of kindliness and generosity… and the stench of every company in the land insisting that you spend your hard-earned money on their wares. Fortunately, STOP THE TRAFFIK is here to provide some retail assistance, with some beautiful gift … Read more
Red Light Freedom Run
Someone wise once said that if you want to win something, run 100 metres, but if you want to experience something, to really achieve something, run a marathon… Every minute of every day, vulnerable women and girls are trafficked into the sex industry across the world - unseen, unheard, unnoticed. For one group of anti-trafficking activists, … Read more
Diplomatic Immunity – Getting Away With It…
As a child I spent a few years languishing in an annoyingly posh primary school feeling a bit out of place. With a trumped-up school comes a trumped-up version of the typical school bully. I can’t remember his name, but this nine-year-old was extremely well-versed in international criminal law, which he used to devastatingly good … Read more
Global News 25/11/2010
Thailand / US If you want a ‘happy ending’, it depends, of course, on where you stop your story. This article from the LA Times is a perfect example. A Thai victim of human trafficking who has just been reunited with his family at LA International Airport after 6 years describes it as the most … Read more
Global News 18/11/2010
US Last week in New York, the UN launched a fund which will provide legal, humanitarian and financial aid to victims of human trafficking. Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon summed up the plight faced by trafficking victims quite neatly: “Many victims end up stranded, friendless… and may not ask for help because they … Read more
Trafficking & The Sex Industry: Where do you stand?
The Economist’s ‘Where do you stand?’ advertising campaign, which consists of a series of juxtaposed posters with opposing arguments on contentious issues, has delved into the sex industry, asking “Prostitution: Crime or Business?”. One of the arguments on the poster, which can be found sprawled across the walls of London underground stations, reads as follows: … Read more
Global News 04/11/2010
US Baseball is not a thing that I know much about, or have ever really paid much attention to. I remember playing it a few times in PE lessons at school and recall the teacher instructing me to “swing really hard in case I hit it”. I feel that this teacher may have failed to … Read more
Global News
South East Asia: A series of successful arrests has hopefully brought to an end a human trafficking operation that spanned Thailand and Laos. A police raid on a bar led to the discovery of 12 Laotian girls being held in a Holiday Inn hotel in Muang Lop Buri. This raises the question yet again of … Read more
Children found enslaved on Worcester farm
Earlier this week I got home quite late. It was dark; I was feeling rather cold, hungry and was generally struggling to come to terms with the fact that winter seemed to be looming heavily. Anyway, I foraged around the kitchen on the hunt for comfort food and managed to uncover a rather limp cucumber … Read more
The Hilton: luxury, relaxation & trafficking
Recently, a Hilton hotel in southwest China lost it’s 5-star rating. Why’s that then, I hear you all asking? The jacuzzi, maybe? – heated to 31.5º instead of 31º? Possibly the beef dish in the restaurant was a little too pink? I know: it was the Margaritas in the rooftop bar, wasn’t it? – a … Read more
