Fact: UK Anti-Slavery Day, October 18th

Today the United Kingdom celebrates, Anti-Slavery Day, which falls on 18 October each year. The day provides an opportunity to draw attention to the subject and to pressurize government, local authorities, public institutions and private and public companies to address the scale and scope of human trafficking.

The Anti-Slavery Day Bill became law in 2010. It was introduced in Parliament as a Private Members Bill by Anthony Steen MP for Totnes, South Devon, in 2010 and passed through both Houses, unopposed although amended. The bill defines modern-day slavery as child trafficking, forced labour, domestic servitude and trafficking for sexual exploitation.

Modern Slavery News Round-Up

Great Britain: 'Modern slavery' bill to tighten laws on human trafficking
Home secretary, Theresa May, aims to toughen legislation and counter 'shockingly low' prosecution rates. The home secretary said that prosecution rates for human trafficking were still "shockingly low" across Europe and that an overhaul of the law was needed as there was still some uncertainty over which agencies should be tackling the problem. The bill, which will be introduced before the current session of parliament ends next spring, will consolidate and toughen existing anti-trafficking legislation.

Texas: Bill would target domestic human trafficking
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, co-sponsored with Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, will add to existing federal efforts to combat what he called the “scourge of human trafficking.” “We have to make human trafficking unprofitable, and we have to make the consequences such that people simply don't want to risk it,” he said. The bill would create a special fund that would finance human trafficking deterrence and victims' support programs through fines and penalties assessed on those convicted of child pornography, sexual exploitation, human trafficking and human smuggling offenses. Currently, about $20 million to $30 million in federal money goes to domestic trafficking prevention and deterrence — far less than that dedicated to international trafficking deterrence programs, Cornyn said. His bill would boost federal funding for domestic human trafficking victim support programs by an estimated $10 million to $20 million.

Black Mauritanians suffer 'slavery-like' conditions, says UN Black Mauritanians are still subject to slavery-like practices, including sexual violence and discrimination, a UN human rights expert has said. The UN special rapporteur on racism, Mutuma Ruteere, told the Guardian that generations of people, particularly women and girls, were still living with families in a "slavery-like" relationship, and were being forced into sex with male relatives, in some cases with their fathers.

Mauritania: Modern-Day Slave Finds Freedom in the Desert
At SOS Esclaves offices in Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital, Matallah Ould Mbarak Alsalem prepares tea. Matallah is a handyman and cleaner at SOS Esclaves, an NGO dedicated to the fight against slavery and coming to the aid of slaves and former slaves. He is one himself. Born in a desert region of north-eastern Mauritania, his mother was a Hratine, a slave, and by convention so was he. The Hratine, the main slave caste, are descendants of black African ethnic groups subjugated for the most part by white Arab Berbers. Estimates indicate that 10-20 percent of Mauretania's 3.5 million people are slaves, though exact numbers are hard to come by.

Cindy McCain: Address human trafficking before 2015 Super Bowl
McCain is calling on Arizona leaders to enact harsher penalties for human traffickers before the Super Bowl lands in Glendale in 2015 because the sports event is one of the largest drivers of the sex-trade industry. The annual football game is among the most-watched sports events in the world and draws tens of thousands of people to its host city. State attorneys general in Texas and Indiana, where recent Super Bowls were held, and other experts, have said the event creates an ideal setting for traffickers because they easily can go unnoticed in the influx of people, according to media reports. New Jersey, which will host the 2014 Super Bowl, recently passed a new law toughening penalties for traffickers.

ILO Initiative Protects Women from Modern-Day Slavery Over 100,000 girls and women in South Asia are set to benefit from a new initiative by the International Labor Organization and the UK Department for International Development, which aims to prevent trafficking within the region and to the Middle East. The Work in Freedom program, funded by UK aid, will focus on trafficking in domestic labor and the garment sector through known labor trafficking routes from Bangladesh, India and Nepal, to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and India.

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.