What To Do About Ht And Resources

What We Can Do to Free More Slaves As Individuals •

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Know the warning signs of slavery & human trafficking, and report suspicious behavior to your local antitrafficking shelter, social services provider, or police station. Or call the 24-hour National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline (1-888-373-7888) or the U.S. Department of Justice’s hotline (1-888-428-7581, during regular business hours). Help educate people in your community about how to identify slavery and trafficking, particularly people like law enforcement officials, medical workers, restaurant inspectors, transit workers, and service station employees who are most likely to come in contact with victims. A community member’s guide to fighting human trafficking & slavery, a guide that includes the warning signs of slavery, is available from Free the Slaves.

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Adopt and clone the liberators both overseas and at home by giving a regular contribution to an antislavery organization that frees people from slavery and helps them rebuild their lives. See www.freedomdirect.net Bring the antislavery message to your faith community or other community group; use your moral leadership to help others in your community join in this inspiring opportunity to make history. One good way is to share this book (Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves, Bales, 2007). If you are a community leader, or just a concerned individual, make your city one of the inaugural SlaveryFree Cities. See details at www.slaveryfreecities.org.

As Community Members •

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In your book club, Sunday School, scout troop, women’s group, MeetUp, senior center, Rotary Club, other community group, or library book discussion listwhatever is right for you- offer to show a DVD, discuss this book, or give a presentation to help others learn about contemporary slavery. When schoolchildren learn about modern slavery, they become unstoppable in their determination to end it. Give them the opportunity to join the antislavery movement by sharing with them, and letting their teachers know about teaching packs from Free the Slaves. Help children in other ways to turn the act of ending slavery into deep learning. Build an antislavery library in our schools and filing cabinets. A vast store of knowledge about freeing slaves is scattered around the world, little of it collected and organized. As a result, wheels are being reinvented and hard lessons learned over and over again. We can make sure that everyone has access to information about modern slavery and what to do about it. Collect books, movies, and information and create a central repository

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in your community. This will help our own communities and groups to become seeds of freedom for others around the world. For groups like the Peace Corps, Voluntary Service Overseas, and faith-based organizations, train your volunteers to recognize the warning signs of slavery and trafficking and to be of service to antislavery workers in all sectors. For all of us, through the charities and development groups we support, provide remuneration and recognition needed to attract and retain skilled frontline antislavery workers for the communities that need them most. Help them be trained in conflict resolution to make communities’ transition to freedom as safe as possible. For funders, provide flexible, long-term funding for stable, efficient grassroots groups; foster and participate in a dialogue with other funders, freed slaves, and antislavery workers to plan better support for communities that are freeing themselves.

As Governments and Citizens •

Build a national plan to end slavery within its borders, bringing together all relevant government agencies to achieve this end and appointing an antislavery ambassador charged with coordinating the government’s efforts. Such a plan works through everything that will

be required (and what help will be needed from other countries and groups) to stop all forms of slavery. National leaders must initiate and own this plan if it is to be effective.

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Make the law fit the crime. Revise ineffective laws so they will work as they should. Antislavery laws must address all forms of slavery, punish the slaveholders, compensate the slaves for their stolen labor, decriminalize slaves who are undocumented or who have been forced to work in illicit activities, and provide for rehabilitation and reintegration. Most of all the law must be prioritized for enforcement. Task and train law enforcement officials to detect slavery, help survivors to safety, and punish the slaveholders; ensure that there is one person in each police precinct who is tasked with leading antislavery efforts. Task and train enough labor inspectors to effectively monitor workplaces and locations known to be prone to slavery. In North America and Europe, slavery is most prevalent in domestic servitude, prostitution, farmwork, restaurant work, and sweatshop labor. In the developing world slavery is more widespread and is often found in farmwork, mining, domestic servitude, prostitution, work in shops and street markets, and labor in small factories and in production areas like brick kilns, forest clearance, and fishing.

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Close the loopholes. Nearly every country has legal loopholes that are being exploited by human traffickers and slaveholders. Countries should examine immigration, labor, commercial, licensing, procurement, and other laws from a slavery perspective and close those gaps. Register and regulate agencies that help people find work overseas and educate migrants about the potential risks. Ensure that every newborn receives a birth certificate and that the birth is registered. Children who do not legally exist are more easily captured and enslaved. Poor countries will need help to establish a birth registry. Use diplomacy, trade, and foreign aid to target slavery. Require trading partners to take antislavery actions. Give debt relief on the condition that savings are used for antislavery efforts. Countries that are linked by the slave trade should enact bilateral antislavery agreements. Voters and citizens: Ask your elected officials what they are doing to end slavery. Make it clear that this is a priority for you.

As the United Nations, World Bank, and World Trade Organization •

The United Nations should appoint a special representative of the secretary-general for slavery and human trafficking. The special representative would be charged with preparing for a meeting of the Security Council on contemporary slavery. When the Security Council meets to address slavery, it should pass a resolution making clear that ending slavery is a priority of the United Nations. It should follow that commitment with three concrete actions: o The permanent members, and any other members who choose to, should make a contribution to the budget of the special representative as a sign of their commitment. o On the recommendation of the special representative, the Security Council should appoint a committee of experts to review the existing conventions on slavery and recommend how to unify and clarify these conventions as well as how to coordinate and improve the U.N.’s programmatic response to slavery. o The Security Council should establish a commission to determine how the existing U.N.

As Consumers, Businesses, and Governments

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inspection mandate could be applied to slavery. When that commission comes back with a resolution to form an inspectorate for the slavery and human trafficking conventions, the U.N.’s policies will, at long last, have teeth. The World Bank should guard against funding projects that increase vulnerability to slavery, and it should require antislavery measures be included in funded projects as a conditionality of loans and grants. Member countries should insert into the workings of the WTO a recognition of slavery and its jus cogens status in international law, and they should create an independent department concerned with slavery and other labor issues. Any member country could start this process by asking the WTO secretariat to set up a study group to look into it. Two member countries should cooperate to bring a trade dispute over slavery to WTO mediation in order to clarify trade rules regarding slavery, to resolve how the rules could be put to work against slavery, and to establish precedent.

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Consumers: Everywhere you shop, tell the store manager that you do not want to buy slave-made goods, and ask what the business is doing to fight slavery. Applaud and support companies that take responsibility for their product chains. Investors: Ask of your mutual funds and savings and retirement funds, how is the investment of my money screened to exclude any profit from slavery? The investment industry should develop the screens and practices necessary to offer opportunities to invest without participating in slavery. For the latest information on the development of such screens, see www.slaveryscreen.org Employees: Encourage the business you work for to become an antislavery leader (see number 4). Ask that your employer donate money or in-kind services to antislavery organizations, both local and international, and ask that the business match employees’ contributions to antislavery organizations. Both types of contributions will get the business a tax deduction and build goodwill while also helping to end slavery. Business Leaders: Become one of the first antislavery business leaders. Explore your supply chain, and if you

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find slavery, approach antislavery experts to help you evaluate how best to eradicate it at its source. Enter into public-private partnerships in good faith and follow through on your commitments. Support good governance in the countries where you do business. Businesses and governments: Form and support publicprivate partnerships to investigate product chains and find ways to rid them of slavery. Industries can form such groups through their trade associations, or the government can act as a facilitator. Antislavery organizations, child labor groups, trade unions, consumer groups, and international development organizations should join in the partnerships as they focus on specific commodities and products. National governments: Authorize a task force of a sufficient size and reach to effectively interdict importation of slave-made goods and goods with components that are tainted with slavery. Both national laws and international conventions make it clear that importation of these goods is illegal. Such interdiction would include a mechanism for the seizure of “hot goods”.

As Development Organizations, Charities, and Supporters of Overseas Development •

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Individuals can support both antislavery groups that are liberating slaves and the development agencies that are attacking the causes of slavery. Donations do not have to be large, but it is crucial that this support is committed and long lasting. Reducing the factors that support slavery and helping slaves to freedom and then autonomy and citizenship take time. One of the greatest needs for the antislavery movement today is reliable, committed funding. Development organizations, as well as government agencies doing development work, should assign staff to examine projects and organizational strategies through a slavery lens. The staff might find small adjustments to existing excellent projects that will have a dramatic impact in reducing slavery. More research and analysis must be done to explore the relationship of development and slavery eradication. A

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university could establish a center for such inquiry that would also serve as a repository for the information that exists. Antislavery groups and development groups should meet together to explore how they can make their work more mutually reinforcing. In South Asia especially such coordination could result in many more slaves being liberated and achieving lives of dignity

More Resources about Human Trafficking

www.freetheslaves.net

www.endhumantrafficking.org www.notforsalecampaign.org www.polarisproject.org www.humantrafficking.org http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=192 (a documentary, Slavery: A Global Investigation)

http://www.usdoj.gov/whatwedo/whatwedo_ctip.html (U.S. Department of Justice; Trafficking in Persons)