Modern Slavery News Round-Up

Demands grow for child guardians to end shame of modern slavery in the UK 
Safe accommodation could stop suspected victims being found by traffickers, say experts.The number of children identified as potential victims rose by 12% last year, according to a recent report by the UK Human Trafficking Centre. It identified 2,255 potential child victims – up from 2,077 the previous year. Advocates of guardianship say it would ensure secure housing, education and legal support to stop trafficked children falling back into the hands of their exploiters.

Nail bars: modern-day slavery in plain sight?
...the beauty industry was one of the most resilient and dependably priced of all throughout the latest recession – nail-care businesses and lipstick sellers in particular. But it turns out that there may be another, far darker reason for the rise of the affordable manicure in the UK of late. A report by the Sunday Times (paywalled link) this week presented evidence about nail salons staffed by illegal immigrants, specifically from Vietnam. According to the report, industry insiders estimate that there are 100,000 Vietnamese manicurists working in the UK, despite only 29,000 Vietnamese-born migrants officially being registered in census data. [Questions raised below by commenters over these figures have been addressed in our Reality Check blog – see footnote.] It alleges that some of these illegal migrants are victims of "what appears to be a human-trafficking network" and that they are sometimes forced to work as prostitutes as well as manicurists. According to the latest numbers from Eurostat, 80% of human trafficking victims are female.

The economic case for ending slavery
Instead all of us in the anti-slavery organisations must start working together to effectively make the case to governments and the private sector of the economic benefits of eliminating slavery, over and above the unarguable moral case to end this atrocity. $32bn (£21bn) in annual profits sounds impressive doesn't it? Who wouldn't be happy with such huge profits? The problem is, that is the estimate of how much criminals make from modern slavery every year (pdf). It's a powerful statistic, and one of the most commonly cited. But it is becoming increasingly clear that focussing on these criminally generated profits frames the problem wrongly, and risks undermining effective policy action to end this atrocity.