The hidden world of domestic servants

The email dropped into my inbox, but it was hard to believe the horrors it described. Often with our Business Travellers against Human Trafficking campaign we get reports about human trafficking, suspicions that a hotel in India, Dubai, Manila or elsewhere has been used to exploit, rape and destroy the lives of young women whose only mistake was to trust the wrong people with their dreams...

A man dreaming of a quiet retirement.

I just got back from sitting with a man called Jeff, while he showed me pictures of the home he’d been building for his retirement. Jeff is grey, and thin, but there is an assurance in his manner, which somehow reflects the experience of a man used to being in control. He had his computer on an ordinary desk next to his kitchen. While he carefully made us tea, we watched the snow outside...

Trust

She had invited us through the front of the Thai massage parlour, into the back area where the women wait, watch TV and get ready. We sat there listening as she poured out her anger and frustration.  It struck me once again how the normal face of exploitation is boredom and exhaustion, punctuated by violence and fear. It was an ordinary living room, sofas, chairs, cigarette smoke, a...

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...