Launched to mark the UN’s inaugural World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, The Salvation Army’s new Freedom Partnership is aimed at encouraging Australians to engage with the issue of slavery both in their own communities and overseas. DAVID ADAMS reports…
Raise the issue of slavery in the contemporary Australian context and people will usually think of the sex industry or turn their eyes to sweat-shops overseas.
But the Salvation Army’s Jenny Stanger says it may surprise many people that such examples are only part of a very large and complex picture.
“We’ve got quite a big job to do raise people’s awareness that slavery happens in agriculture and construction and the natural resources industry and retail and restaurants and bakeries and nail salons – pretty much any industry where people are vulnerable, where it’s unregulated, where worker’s rights are not very strong,” she says.
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GETTING THE COMMUNITY ENGAGED: Jenny Stanger is the national manager of the Salvation Army’s Freedom Project. “We’ve got quite a big job to do raise people’s awareness that slavery happens in agriculture and construction and the natural resources industry and retail and restaurants and bakeries and nail salons – pretty much any industry where people are vulnerable, where it’s unregulated, where worker’s rights are not very strong.”– Jenny Stanger, national manager of the Salvation Army’s Freedom Project |
To that end, the Salvation Army is today launching the Freedom Partnership initiative with the aim of mobilising Australians to get more active in the fight against slavery and slavery-like practices both at home and abroad.
The initiative will use a range of online tools – including social media (hashtags include #freedompartnership and #takepartpledgenow) – to engage people on the issue, asking them to take a “Freedom Pledge” online in which they promise to buy Fairtade products and make ethical financial investments, participate in at least five online campaigns and share their pledge with at least 10 friends or family and encourage them to make the pledge.
The Salvation Army also have staff on the ground including an advocacy coordinator based in Canberra, a community organiser based in Melbourne and two staff, including Ms Stanger, in Sydney who will provide support to faith-based groups like churches as well as clubs, students, trade unions, community service providers, government agencies and policy-makers looking at the issue.
The move comes after Australia’s Federal Parliament last year passed legislation criminalising slavery-like conditions outside of the sex industry.
Ms Stanger, who is the national manager of the Freedom Project, says before the bill was passed, “the whole response to slavery for the last 10 years was designed to assist people working in the sex industry”.
“It wasn’t until just last year that we’ve now have got an equal criminalisation across industries,” says Ms Stanger, who is a member of the Australian Government’s National Roundtable on People Trafficking and who, before coming to Australia, co-founded the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking in Los Angeles and was a founding member of national US-based slavery advocacy network, the Freedom Network. “For the last 10 years a lot of people in forced labour or in servitude, essentially, were falling through the cracks.”
The new initiative follows the Salvation Army’s establishment of a Sydney “safe house” for female victims of trafficking and slavery in 2008 – the only facility of its kind in Australia.
Ms Stanger says more than 300 people have been assisted through the safe house including residential and non-residential support. The safe house has also provided assistance to family members of those held in slavery living in other countries and has also worked with people who might be vulnerable to slavery but not yet in the situation.
While hard data in terms of how widespread the problem is in Australia is difficult to come by, Ms Stanger says about 320 people have been so far been officially recognised as victims of slavery by the Federal Government. But she adds that the problem is significantly under-reported.
“We know that community organisations are working with a lot of people who are trafficked here or enslaved here who don’t report to government…” she says. “There are some real risks to collaborating (with law enforcement). Some people, they just don’t want to, they’re not interested in criminal prosecution of their slave-holders – they just want to be safe and away from them.”
Ms Stanger says that while most slavery cases in Australia to date have involved women working in the sex industry, that has started to change thanks to the new legislation which covers everything from forced labour and servitude to deceptive recruiting for services and forced marriage.
“Since the laws passed, the statistics are starting to change,” she says, citing figures from Australian Federal Police which show that in 2013-14, while 49 per cent of their case load related to trafficking in the sex industry, 35 per cent of related to labour trafficking and 17 per cent to forced marriage.
“So it’s really critical that we get this news out to organised labour, community service organisations and, honestly, even just the general public because people in slavery could be hidden in plain sight in their community…” says Ms Stanger.
“We really need people to think about whose around them – who’s vulnerable – and for people to know it’s OK to check on people and to ask them what their situation is and to ask them if they need help. And if they have information that’s concerning to them, to share that information with someone who can provide appropriate assistance and an appropriate response, whether that’s the Salvation Army, whether that’s the AFP or their local police.
“We really want to make sure that people know there are people they can call who can help them assess the information and advise them what to do next…We just really want people to start getting educated and getting involved.”
Ms Stanger says that while Australia has a robust criminal justice response to slavery, “what we’re really lacking is the community getting engaged, getting aware and getting active. And that’s what the Freedom Partnership aims to do.”
