It Still Happens Here: Fighting UK Slavery in the 2020s
The Centre for Social Justice and Justice and Care uncover hidden slavery in the UK, HTF and BASNET host an online forum on diversity in anti-trafficking, and GFEMS publishes blog posts on the next steps for anti-modern-slavery work.
Yesterday, the think tank Centre for Social Justice and the anti-slavery charity Justice and Care released a new report, which claims that there are likely to be more than 100,000 victims in the UK, based on new analysis of police data. This means that fewer than one in ten have been discovered.
While The Modern Slavery Act 2015 undoubtedly marked a leap forward in Britain’s anti-slavery movement, and has had a significant impact across the UK, there is a risk that the act has created a false sense of security as the problem of modern slavery grows in the country. Far from being finished the work is only just beginning, the report says.
During the course of their research across the UK, the authors kept hearing the same story from frontline workers who are hindered by a foggy national picture and a lack of reliable data. In an effort to compensate for these obstacles, the report utilized an exclusive and pioneering new data tool to help estimate the size of the problem. Using crime reports and intelligence records from one of the UK’s major police forces, the new tool was able to identify cases in which modern slavery was likely to be involved – even if the report or log had not been ‘tagged’ as a slavery case. This is important because there are many reasons why a police officer may not ‘tag’ an event as involving modern slavery; the modern slavery crime tag was only introduced in 2016 and there remains a lack of awareness and training among police forces.
This new method of data collection suggests there could be at least 100,000 victims in the UK. This underlines the fact that the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) data that is currently relied upon reflects just the tip of the iceberg, and paints a picture of a much, much bigger problem than has previously been understood. The findings also show that frontline agencies are only just getting started in the fight against modern slavery. They are in desperate need of guidance, resources, leadership and, crucially, data on the scale of the problem.
The report calls for government action and provides recommendations to strengthen the UK’s fight against slavery. These include tapping into the potential of innovative partnerships between charities and the police, and finally passing the Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill 2019 – 2021, which would give victims in England and Wales a guaranteed right to support while the NRM reviewed their case, and for a minimum of 12 months afterwards.
Read the full report here.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
Following a query sent to our Facebook group for reporting support on supply chains and forced labor, a new article details how Bangladesh’s garment sector is reeling from the economic impact of Covid-19 and how manufacturers are using the pandemic as an excuse to weaken unions and purge ‘undesirable’ workers.
Al Jazeera Media Network has strongly rejected allegations made by Malaysian authorities over investigative documentary Locked Up, aired on 3 July, about the arrest of undocumented migrants during the coronavirus pandemic.
Research conducted with returned migrants in Bangladesh found that 93% of respondents do not have enough income to support themselves, while a staggering 86% said they had not received help from any support services since returning. Almost half of respondents said returnees are discriminated against within their communities, putting this population at high risk of exploitation. Read USAID Asia CTIP’s recommendations for protecting returned migrants in the full report here.
Child protection organizations in Kenya say more needs to be done to protect young people from exploitation by overseas perpetrators, as the country reports a rising number of abuse cases. Anti-trafficking organizations say widespread trust in white outsiders makes children an easy target for abusers from the West.
The Human Trafficking Foundation (HTF) and the BME Anti-Slavery Network (BASNET) invite you to join an online forum on 23 July to address the lack of diversity and inclusion in the operating and delivering of services, and discuss how we can all work together as a sector to find positive solutions.
Over the past quarter, the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS) has been contributing a series of guest blogs to the Council on Foreign Relations. Read about the need for greater investment in modern slavery research to make data-driven decisions, the opportunity to reshape migrant labor systems, and the potential to make meaningful progress towards prevention and prevalence reduction following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Join four women advocates from Bangladesh, Malaysia, Canada and Australia in the very first Rohingya-women-only panel organized by Rohingya women-led organizations to share their observations on the gendered experiences of Rohingya women through genocide, mass atrocities, and lives as refugees.
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