VIENNA: British actress Emma Thompson, Latino pop star Ricky Martin and Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak lent their names to an international campaign against human trafficking Wednesday.
The stars were guest speakers at the UN’s first-ever forum to raise public awareness about the multi-billion-dollar trafficking industry.
And they insisted that it was not only up to the policy-makers and law enforcement agencies around the world to eradicate this modern-day form of slavery, but the general public at large.
While discussion about human trafficking tends to focus on the sex trade, almost every sector of industry was affected, campaigners said.
“Every time you buy a bar of chocolate that doesn’t carry a ‘traffik-free’ label, you’ve got blood on your teeth, said Steve Chalke of the non-governmental organization Stop the Traffik.
An estimated 12,000 children were trafficked from Mali to harvest cocoa beans on the Ivory Coast, which accounts for nearly half the world’s chocolate, Chalke said.
So, “when we buy chocolate we are being forced to be oppressors ourselves as we have no guarantee that the chocolate we eat is ‘traffik free’. We have to change our lifestyle, Chalke insisted.
In his welcoming speech to the conference, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, likened the three-day forum to both the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the legendary music festival, Woodstock.
“When you look at the range of talent in this room, you would position UN.GIFT (the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking) between Woodstock and Davos, Costa said.
“Government statements, expert discussions, along with music, speeches, videos, films and art to inspire us all. I hope, by the end of the forum, a roadmap will be developed to guide us forward, Costa said.
“This is not an inter-governmental conference, nor is it a talk shop, he continued. “Think of it more as a rally. We march together.
Over the next three days, 1,200 experts, law enforcement teams, business leaders, NGO representatives and trafficking victims were scheduled to draw up strategies for the worldwide fight against human trafficking.
Human-trafficking is used in a number of crimes, ranging from forced labor and sexual exploitation to the removal of organs and body parts.
According to UN estimates, around 2.5 million people are being trafficked around the world at any given time, and 80 percent of those are women and children.
The estimated global annual profits made from the exploitation of all trafficked force labor are $31.6 billion.
Puerto Rican pop star Martin, who has set up his own child welfare foundation, told delegates that once he had become aware of the problem of human trafficking, he could not simply stand by and do nothing.
Once I knew about it, I could not keep quiet, he said.
I witnessed the horrors of human trafficking on a trip to India, where I saved three little girls from the streets of Calcutta. You have a problem. You know what was going on and if you won t do anything, you allow it to happen. With my foundation, I hope to ensure that every child has the right to be a child.
Accompanying the forum are a number of other events, including a film festival and a harrowing new art installation, which graphically depicts the terrifying ordeal of a woman sold into the sex trade.
The installation, entitled Journey , was conceived by actress Emma Thompson in close collaboration with a Moldovan woman, named only as Elena, who was trafficked into the UK sex industry when she was just 18.
Journey already drew crowds of 15,000 when it was displayed in London s Trafalgar Square last year and is set to go on a European tour after Vienna.
