Today is World Day against Trafficking in Persons.  At SDG Legal we hate slavery.  It is horrific that women, boys, girls and men are exploited so that other people can make a profit of them. 

Modern slavery takes many forms: sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, domestic servitude, forced child labour, and the unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers.  It happens all around us but often we don’t see it, or we don’t know what to do if we have a suspicion that trafficking in persons (“TIP”) is taking place.  

To help empower us all to stand together and stop people being abused and exploited we spoke with our friend at Love Justice, Briony Fickling.  Love Justice is an NGO that operates in 24 countries at 63 transit monitoring stations and operates 21 shelters for victims of TIP.  Over the last 16 years, their transit monitors have intercepted over 31 511 individuals who were in the process of being trafficked – that is 31 511 lives they have saved! Through collaboration with local and international law enforcement their work has led to the arrest of 1 128 suspected human traffickers and 33% of the closed cases have resulted in convictions.  

Briony, for those people who are not familiar with the topic, could you tell us – what is human trafficking?

We often prefer to refer to Human Trafficking as Modern-Day Slavery because it paints a wider picture of what trafficking in persons looks like in today’s age. At Love Justice, we define human trafficking as being moved into slavery, and slavery we define as being without the power to refuse work. 

Is human trafficking something that is happening in South Africa?

Definitely. South Africa is a source, destination and transit country for human trafficking which means that victims of human trafficking come from South Africa, are transported to South Africa and are moved through the country. From the very worst types of abuse and exploitation that you could imagine to other more insidious, normalised versions of slavery such as the extraordinary exploitation of foreigners for forced labour and servitude, the power differentials between blessers and their sugar babies, and young boys working as cattle herders. 

How is Love Justice fighting human trafficking?

Love Justice is a non-profit organisation that specialises in training and placing monitors at borders and transit points to identify potential victims and prevent trafficking before people are exploited. Transit monitoring is a data-driven strategy and the world’s only measurable prevention model for human trafficking. The early identification and interception of potential victims of human trafficking is done using a questioning protocol that enables effective decision-making for monitors and authorities using weighted red flags of trafficking and quantifying the potential risk or evidence of trafficking. The monitoring model also leverages actionable intelligence to train officials as well as to facilitate the arrest, prosecution and conviction of traffickers. 

We operate in countries across the globe, mostly in Africa and Asia but we have recently expanded to all corners of the world including Ecuador, Alaska, Scotland and Romania. We had record impact for the fifth straight month in a row this month, with 993 intercepts led by impact breakthroughs in Namibia, Mozambique, and Liberia, and steady impact growth from older fields like India, Bangladesh, Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Nepal. Expansion is a massive focus of the organisation as we aim to develop strategic ways to cultivate a global community confronting some of the world’s greatest injustices.

Human trafficking is a terrible, evil thing and is very often linked to poverty with traffickers taking advantage of people’s desperation to make a better life for themselves.  Do you have any stories of where Love Justice was able to intervene and help people escape the cycle of trafficking?

The team in Namibia recently started monitoring in a new town, right on the border of a neighbouring country. After a presentation to the local immigration staff, one of the immigration officials offered to take the Project Manager and the monitors on a tour around the town to the local hotspots that had been identified for human trafficking. During this tour, the team was shown a marketplace where they saw people being sold for less than a dollar for labour (and only up to $3 for a day). They were told that the people are foreigners from the neighbouring country and that there are 3 specific individuals who go to this country to recruit people for work in Namibia, from nearby towns to areas 600kms away from the border. Many, many minors are enticed too. The recruiters tell them wonderful things about Namibia, they promise them a better life and arrange and pay for their travel to this border town where the market is located. The people stand under a tree being sold to people who drive by and negotiate with the facilitators who get a cut. Some come back from their jobs at night, only to sleep under the same tree under which they are sold. Most never come back. After a week of working on relationships with immigration in the area, the Project Manager and monitors asked if they could work on helping the people in the market – those who want to – to go home. And so began the rescue mission. The monitors started talking to the foreigners, asking how and why they had come to Namibia and asking whether they would prefer to go home. Many had hoped for a better life in Namibia but they now found themselves in a situation worse than they could have imagined, and their babies were sick and they couldn’t do anything about it. The recruiters occasionally bought them bread so they would survive. They said they would prefer to go back home and live off their land rather than continue to be exploited while risking their lives and their children’s lives. The first group of people to go back home were given bread for the journey and some maize meal to help them survive when they got home. However, the group quickly grew and the people were collected from similar marketplaces in nearby towns too. There were a lot of young adults, young children and even children with their own babies. The Project Manager for Namibia says it was heartbreaking to see. In total, there were more than 90 people (and more babies not counted!) who returned to their country with hopes of a better life safely at home.

The theme of this World Day Against Trafficking in Persons is the use and abuse of technology in enabling and impeding trafficking.  Could you give us some practical examples of how traffickers target people in South Africa?

The first story that comes to mind is one of a mother in South Africa innocently seeking modelling work for her daughter on social media and our monitor was able to intervene. A mother posted photos of her 12-year-old daughter on a Facebook page in hopes of getting a modelling agent for her daughter. A lot of people commented on the post, some complimenting the child, others writing disturbing messages, and some asking the mother to reach out to them privately about a modelling career. One person that the mother reached out to, turned out to be a 13-year-old boy who, thinking he was talking to the daughter, wanted to be friends with the daughter. The mother was worried and reached out to LJSA for assistance. The monitor contacted the “boy” on Facebook, pretending to be interested in modelling he responded as an adult this time and asked the monitor to send revealing photos of herself to him so he could assess whether he could offer her a modelling contract. He said he lived in the UAE and would arrange her visa and pay for her trip if she did. The monitor declined, and he – now a suspect – became angry. It became clear that the suspect had been trying to lure in a minor via online grooming, clearly disguising his identity by pretending to be a 13-year-old boy when communicating with the potential victim’s mother, seemingly thinking she was the girl and likely attempting to lure in a young, impressionable child with dreams of being a model. Should the mother have continued to pursue this opportunity, it is extremely likely that the child would have been trafficked based on the behaviour, deception and modus operandi of the suspect. Our monitor went back to the mother to inform her about the findings and the mother was extremely relieved that she had been stopped from putting her daughter’s life at risk.

Love Justice has an incredible intervention that you have launched recently called The Freedom Project could you tell us a little bit more about this?

The Freedom Project was launched at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when livelihoods in South Africa were at an all-time low and many people were at high risk of being deceived by traffickers into pursuing fake jobs, relationships, holidays, migration and study opportunities. Out of desperation to make an income or find a better life, many were likely to pursue opportunities that were too good to be true – only to find themselves sold into modern-day slavery. The pandemic forced us to relook our monitoring strategy in South Africa by focusing on spending time on the ground in vulnerable communities searching for people who were in the process of being recruited by traffickers and using digital media such as our app called The Freedom App (found on the Playstore), Facebook and Whatsapp to intercept potential victims. Since the beginning of July 2020, we have rescued 204 individuals from modern-day slavery who had been deceived with false promises.

The impact has been amazing so far:

• Interventions take up to 3 weeks and the quality of the connection results in a truly empowered individual who has all the information about trafficking they need to make empowered decisions for their lives.
• The vast majority of potential victims were desperately in search of work to support their families, many barely surviving off of tiny government grants and the same people who were most severely impacted by the pandemic.
• While limited to people with a smartphone and some data, the Freedom Project has reached many of the tech-savvy young people in South Africa where smartphone and social media penetration is broad. For those who don’t have a smartphone, they have used our number to get in touch.

If people wanted to get involved in fighting human trafficking alongside Love Justice what would you suggest they do?

There are different ways that you can get involved in the work at Love Justice: 

Give your time: If you consistently have time available to invest in the work at Love Justice, there are some opportunities to volunteer that are available. However, these are not always glamourous or exciting, so you need to decide how dirty you’re willing to get your hands! 

Share your talents: Perhaps you have skills to offer on an ad hoc basis that could be helpful or connect us to your network for skills, expertise and services that we may need or partnerships that we are looking for.

Support financially: Whether it is Love Justice or another organisation combatting human trafficking, much of the incredible work that is happening in South Africa is being done by civil society and we need your financial support to do what we do and to do MORE of what we do. 

Find a job: At Love Justice, we’re on a mission to combat the world’s greatest injustices.

If this sounds like you then there are a range of job vacancies at Love Justice listed on the careers page on the website – especially as we are growing at a rapid rate.