An SMS for help, half way across the world.

An email landed in my inbox through our campaign "Business Travellers against Human Traffiking". It was from a man in Indonesia, begging for help. His friend had been in debt, which she couldn't pay off. As she couldn't pay, she was being forced to go with traffickers, who said they were taking her to Iraq. She had managed to sms her friend that she was being taken to the plane at 5pm that...

From the street to the classroom

Behind the Gare du Nord in Brussels, there is long street of windows with women in prostitution posing all day. They try not to look bored, but they must be. It's an odd sight, shoppers with children hurrying along a street with women in the windows, and a steady stream of men from the railway station looking for quick sex. That street is the start of the Brussels red light district and...

Isolated, excluded and illegal, what would you do?

When we heard they had her in the detention cells, Rach and I set out to see what we could do. Jane (not her real name) was a part of the church we were leading at the time in south London. A tiny, fine boned, but wonderfully self-reliant African lady from Ghana, we couldn't imagine what the police could want to keep her locked up for. She was being kept at a police station in north London,...

Politicians who love blood chocolate

A few years ago, at the start of the Stop the Traffik chocolate campaign, we were excited to be invited to the UK parliament to discuss the fact that thousands of children were (and are) being trafficked and exploited on the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast. We were invited to a meeting of the Cross Party Committee on Chocolate and Confectionary, no less. With jobs like that, it's a wonder that...

Dubai, the city where everything's for sale.

The text came through on my phone "I'm at the Cyclone, it's like the United Nations of prostitution." It was from a journalist friend who had gone to Dubai to investigate whether women were being trafficked into sexual explotation in that most commercial of gulf states. The fact is that thousands of women are being trafficked and can be found even in the lobbies of many of the five star...

Why education can Stop the Traffik

We were in a building site in Mumbai, squatted down, talking with a thin, defeated looking Indian man called Balraam. It was hot and dusty and we were tired from the day at the drop-in centre we worked in as part of Oasis India. Traffic thundered past as the city headed home. Behind Balraam was his home, a make-shift shack in amongst the construction. Ajay, my colleague, an amazing, tireless...