Slavery :- Good News : Bad News

With the rapidly approaching Bi-Centenial Anniversary of the abolition of Slavery in Britain... Freedom Day March 25th 2007... this news from the BBC is deeply saddening!  This is not the time for more action plans, committees or 'road maps',  no more stalling... this Government seems able to act quickly enough when it wants to, NOW is the time to act for peace and humanity Mr Blair!  Let's see if in two hundred years time the name Blair is synonymous with peace or with war!

(For those for whom the link doesn't work)

UK warned over child trafficking

Trafficked girls and women are often forced into prostitution The government is not doing enough to prevent the trafficking of young people into Britain, a report by two children's charities has claimed.  Many are smuggled in from south-eastern Europe to be used in the sex trade, slavery or for begging, it says.  Unicef UK claims ministers need to do more to help victims once they arrive.  But the Home Office says it is committed to combating the "appalling" trade and has made trafficking punishable by up to 14 years in jail. The United Nations estimates that some 1.2 million children are trafficked across the world each year - with about 246 million youngsters also thought to be involved in child labour.  In the UK alone, between 1999 and 2003, some 250 children were rescued from trafficking.  But Unicef UK says that figure is "the tip of the iceberg" because there is no coherent system of collating how many people are involved. In a joint Unicef and Terre des Hommes report called Action to Prevent Child Trafficking in South Eastern Europe (SEE), author Mike Dottridge says the trade can only be combated by addressing the root causes of the problem.  He makes the claims after visiting Albania, Moldova, Romania and Kosovo.  He says awareness-raising campaigns often waste valuable resources that could be used to look at why children are trafficked and how to stop the process.  Child protection systems in SEE countries need to be improved to check that youngsters crossing borders are not being trafficked.  Youngsters vulnerable to trafficking need to be given life skills education to teach them how to make decisions and give them greater self esteem, says Mr Dottridge.  Agencies, such as the police, immigration officials and social services should be trained to help them identify trafficked children.  And, if the UK government is serious about tackling the trade, it must sign up to the European Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings and ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, he says.
Andrew Radford, deputy executive director of Unicef UK, says: "There are a lot of children falling through the net.  If a child is picked up who is being trafficked, they might end up in a detention centre with asylum-seekers or a foster home.  These options don't give them a secure place to go. They leave them scarred and vulnerable and at risk of being retrafficked.  The trafficker might contact the child. The child might think the trafficker is their boyfriend or worry about what will happen to their family back home or that even a voodoo spell might be put on them."  Mr Radford says trafficked children need a "reflection period", where they can be offered counselling, rehabilitation and a chance to decide what they want to do next.  "They might have a distrust of authority. We need time for the children to recover. They may need time to decide whether to cooperate.  We need to make sure that children who are rescued are only returned to their country of origin if it's safe to do so and make sure they don't fall into trafficking again.  The traffickers themselves are very well organised, very flexible and very ruthless, yet the systems that are in place to deal with them are inflexible and unharmonised.  We want people to write to their MPs to bring the issue higher up the political agenda."
However, a Home Office spokesman said Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker was addressing the problem by chairing a ministerial group on human trafficking to combat the threat posed by traffickers and to ensure victims are protected.  "The Safeguarding Vulnerable Persons Team was recently created at the Home Office to coordinate our specific response to child trafficking," the spokesman said.  Ministers were working with "key stakeholders" across relevant government departments and in the voluntary children's care sector to develop strategies.  "Teams of social workers have already been established at ports, and asylum screening units set up to help identify the particular needs of separated children who may have been trafficked and to help develop plans to safeguard their welfare and protect them from the traffickers," he said.

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Comments

[Existential Punk]

The link takes me to a blank page. What happened with Blair? Adele

[Mark Berry]

Seems to work from this end... but will cut'n'paste a bit of it.

[Rachel]

What the heck
are you saying are you saying the Slave trade act in Canada is making it worse?

[Mark]

Hi Rachel, I'm not sure I follow you... I don't know what the impact of Canadian legislation has on the Traffiking of women and Children in Europe? What I am saying, simply, is that though there is much reason to celebrate the bicenteniary of the Abilition Act in the UK... there is no place for complacency, that slavery is more prevalent than ever (circa 16 million more slaves now than at the time of Abolition). Though it is no longer state sanctioned, the Government still has significant responsibility to a) stamp it out and b) care for those caught up in it.

(edit) I'm wondering if by "The Slave Trade Act in Canada" you are refering to the 1807 act, which was in fact an act passed in the British Parliament... which of course also applied to Canada, then a part of the British Empire? If so then, no, of course I'm not syaing it makes the current situation worse???!!! Just that any celebrations may lull us into thinking Slavery is no more, when the opposite is the case.