Open Democracy

UK Modern Slavery Act: Putting Saviors Before the Saved?

This past week the UK Modern Slavery Act turned four years old. Yet while the government has spent upwards of £100 million to tackle [...]

Interview: Why does Freedom United use the term ‘modern slavery’?

Bangladeshi migrants still paying off debts from working in Qatar

Bangladeshi migrant workers are reporting returning to their home countries saddled with debt after paying high recruitment fees to [...]

Jails in the U.K. hold more victims of modern slavery than perpetrators

Modern slavery victims in the U.K. are legally entitled to specialist support under the Modern Slavery Victim Care Contract regardless [...]

Talking Trafficking With Jamaican Sex Workers

Sex workers in Jamaica face more violence from clients and the police than traffickers, but addressing this problem is one too [...]

India’s new trafficking bill undermines labor rights

India’s newly proposed Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill 2021 is coming under fire for its lack [...]

U.K. accused of subjecting survivors to long periods of solitary confinement

Modern slavery survivor’s horror in U.K. immigration detention centers

“It was like a prison. […] It was traumatic. There were high walls, barbed wires, cameras everywhere. Everywhere you went there were [...]

E.U. deepening support for abuse and exploitation with new Libyan center

The European Union’s support for the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) is set to deepen with the opening of a new Maritime Rescue [...]

The Two-Fronted Fight of Sex Workers Against Trafficking

Sex workers are in a difficult position, fighting both exploitation in the sex industry and misguided policies that are supposed to [...]

What is the role of awareness-raising in tackling modern slavery?

Freedom United on sex work & building resilience to trafficking

Freedom United’s Executive Director, Joanna Ewart-James, explains why Freedom United supports the full decriminalization of sex [...]

U.S. anti-trafficking law putting sex workers & trafficking survivors in danger

The controversial Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA/SESTA) is due to face an important [...]

Samyar’s story: how the U.K. immigration system turns migrants into criminals

In 2022 the former U.K. government made a ministerial change with supporting legislation that seemed on paper quite minor. However, [...]

Beyond Survival to End Domestic Trafficking

This articles argues that we must look beyond survival to end domestic trafficking. Ending labour trafficking requires us to elevate [...]

International law on organized crime key in tackling human trafficking

Long-standing debates within the counter-trafficking and counter-smuggling space have focused on the ineffectiveness around the [...]

Why Freedom United supports the decriminalisation of sex work

European asylum could drive down exploitation

Italy received criticism last month for introducing a controversial code of conduct for search and rescue boats which would put people [...]

Slavery Proposal in Australia Lacks Due Diligence

Komala Ramachandra, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, reports that Australia’s justice minister proposed a new legislation in August [...]

Ethiopian migrants forced to work without pay under Lebanon’s kafala system

Ethiopians make up the majority of the foreign domestic work population employed in Lebanon. The majority of these domestic workers are [...]

U.S. anti-trafficking organizations constrained on sex workers’ rights

The U.S. government makes around $300 million in funding available annually for anti-trafficking organizations, a significant amount [...]

Is the anti-trafficking sector ready for real survivor leadership?

“Survivor leaders are too often viewed as incapable of learning or doing effective anti-trafficking work, and they are tokenised in [...]

New President of Uzbekistan Fails to Keep His Promise

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, promised to outlaw forced labor in his country, but institutions–schools, faculties, [...]

Concerns for migrant workers in U.S. farms and meat plants as COVID-19 spreads

COVID-19 is spreading rapidly through the largely immigrant workforces of U.S. farms and meat factories, but insufficient protections [...]

Institutionalized victimhood: debating sex work in the Philippines

The Philippines enacted its own anti-trafficking law in 2003 with a core focus on ending the sexual exploitation of women and children. [...]

Trafficking survivors in East Asia need greater representation

The majority of people who experience modern slavery are in the Asia Pacific region, nearly 60% of the estimated 50 million according [...]