Social media to boost anti human trafficking networks

sunday, december 19, 2010

The Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement hosted an international conference in Luxor, Egypt, on December 10-12, 2010 against modern forms of slavery in conjunction with the United Nations. Her Excellency Suzanne Mubarak is Egypt’s First Lady and UN Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization, supporting many social causes in health, and education, particularly for women and children.

The theme of the conference—“Human Trafficking”—highlighted the disturbing statistic that human trafficking is the third most profitable illegal business, behind weapons and drug trafficking. The UN states that it affects over 2 million people each year.

Human trafficking is the illegal trade in humans, either for commercial sexual exploitation or forced labour (commonly referred to as modern day slavery). It is different from human smuggling whereby people pay others to transport them across borders, usually so that they can escape their country’s situation in order to live in another country. Once inside a country, the person is free. With human trafficking, the traffickers subject their victims to emotional or physical suppression and oppression.

The UN adopted the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons in 2000. The Trafficking Protocol was implemented on December 25, 2003. Today, the Trafficking Protocol has signatories from 117 countries.

A 2007 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime documented that the most common destinations for victims of human trafficking are Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and America. The major sources of trafficked persons come from Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.

The conference objectives were to fully capture the dimensions of human trafficking; to engage moral figures, business leaders, artists and academics to assume the role of champions of the cause; and to build on the dynamism of youth to jointly develop tangible solutions to combat human trafficking.

At the conference close, one recommendation was to use social media to boost anti-trafficking networks in light of the media’s advocacy and activist role to raise awareness of the global crime.