UK Commits £1.7million, Creates New Initiatives to Fight Trafficking

Yesterday, the new UK-based anti-trafficking initiative The Council of Europe Convention Against Trafficking in Human Beings took effect. In addition to creating minimum legal rights for victims of trafficking, the initiative will double anti-trafficking funding to £1.7million, mostly for services for victims.  Some of the new measures include:

* A National Referral Mechanism, providing a nationally agreed framework to help front line staff identify victims of trafficking and offer them support;
* £4 million over two years to enhance the services for victims including an expansion of accommodation and support through the criminal justice system- resulting in more traffickers being brought to justice; and
* Granting a 45 day minimum reflection and recovery period to victims and the possibility of a one-year renewable residence permit.

I am especially interested to see the results of the national referral mechanism, and that sounds like a tool which could be very helpful here in the U.S.  Then again, differences in state and local law might make a more centralized or formal referral system unusable.  It will be interesting to see whether or not this new initiative allows UK and European trafficking services agencies to communicate better and identify the most appropriate placement for survivors.

You can read the detail of the Convention here.  This might be an interesting thing to think about for the U.S., perhaps as part of an inter-American convention to address trafficking from Central and South America.

Image from telegraph.co.uk