femLENS has been invited to participate in a LAB, about women and children trafficking, organised by Thomson Reuters Trust Foundation, the Global Leadership Academic and GIZ Sector Programme on Gender Equality and Women’s Right.
The LAB meeting – Unveil the Hidden Presence: Trafficking in Women and Children – will take place from 25th to 28th of June 2018 in Nairobi, Kenya and from 10th to 15th of November 2018 in London, United Kingdom (including Trust Conference).
On this coming Monday until Thursday 28th of June, our founder and workshop facilitator Jekaterina Saveljeva will be in Nairobi to participate in the LAB as representative of femLENS.
We are grateful to all people who supported us and contributed to our fundraising campaigns to cover some of the costs to travel to Nairobi. THANK YOU ALL! Your help has been precious! Please consider sharing or further supporting our gofundme campaign as there are still many costs to be covered.
This Leadership and Innovation Lab is a multi-stakeholder dialogue process to provide a platform for all participants to explore one another‘s perspectives and experiences and to create partnerships meant to develop innovative awareness-raising approaches to prevent trafficking in women and children.
According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Every year, thousands of men, women and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad. Almost every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims”.
The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, “defines Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs”
In September 2017, The Evening Standard and The Independent, in partnership with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, launched a three-month special investigation into the issue of modern slavery.
According to the Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery report 2018 issued by The Evening Standard and The Independent, “Research conducted by The Co-op in 2017 suggested that 4 out of 10 people in the UK were not sure what modern slavery was. A third of those who had heard of slavery did not believe it happened in their own city or town. Public awareness is a powerful lever for eradicating slavery, and more must be done to raise awareness by Government, civic society and business.”
This is a great opportunity and responsibility for femLENS and for its future work to contribute to increase awareness on, and prevent trafficking in women and children.
This is a great opportunity for everyone to help us to increase public awareness on human trafficking, especially women and children trafficking, and we invite you to follow, in the next days, femLENS activities in Nairobi on our website, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Come on board and be an active change-agent! You are more than welcome!
Further reading:
https://www.antislaverycommissioner.co.uk/media/1203/evening-standard-modern-slavery-report.pdf
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html?ref=menuside
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/intro/UNTOC.html