UPDATE: We have been invited to work with with Kenneth Kaunda Centre of Human Rights and Democracy. Learn more https://kennethkaunda.org
Modern slavery in the UK: March 2020
The hidden nature of modern slavery makes producing an accurate prevalence measure difficult. This article explores the issue and brings together data sources linked to modern slavery from a range of organisations.
Jobs that you should avoid - Job Descriptions used by human traffickers to entice people into slavery
Jobs to Avoid is a list of "anti-jobs", typical opportunities that are currently being pitched by human traffickers to lure poor people to the hope of a brighter future in the developed world but which are more likely to result in slavery. With 15 million children plus 15 million adults in illegal forced labor all over the world this is information that should be accessible to everyone in every society where people are at risk of falling for human traffickers' lies.
Even the poorest in society tend to have access to a mobile phone (families typically need one to organize work) and WAP2 sites like http://ummeli.com are beginning to be used by poorer people to find and share work opportunities in their locality. Perhaps this list of "anti-jobs" could complement such work bulletin boards, because
- both are resources for those looking for work and
- free "on-deck" WAP-access from the mobile operators' portals is essential to reach the people who need this information most.
We use XHTML WAP2 standards to publish the information on even the most basic feature-phone. We decided that WAP2 was better than SMS because SMS often leaves a communication trail on the phone that could land somebody in trouble if the human trafficker found out. URLs accessed by WAP2 can be legally retrieved by national law-enforcement agencies from their mobile network operators but the risk of this leaking to human traffickers is hopefully near to zero.
Some information sources we have used are:
- http://www.hrw.org/topic/migrants/workers-forced-labor-trafficking
- http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/07/07/if-i-am-not-human-0
- http://www.ungift.org/
- http://dhs.gov/topic/human-trafficking - USA
- http://polarisproject.org - USA
- http://slaverymap.org - USA
- http://lastradainternational.org - Eastern Europe
but we could not find a database of suspicious Job Descriptions to present to people in danger of falling into human traffickers' hands in a quick and concise way that would enable them to recognise when a job opportunity abroad is suspicious. So we mocked up a database of our own to prove the concept:
Jobs to Avoid is best viewed on your phone at http://jobstoavoid.appspot.com