As I got off the Eurostar on Thursday I popped into The Body Shop as I sometimes do since shopping isn’t always easy in my line of work.
I was instantly and happily struck by their latest campaign, a global effort to stop sex trafficking of children and young people. The Body Shop are working in partnership with ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) to raise awareness of those who are most vulnerable to sex trafficking.
The campaign has been going on for sometime and I was really impressed to read about the work the company and its staff have put into raising awareness. In New York and Toronto, hundreds of people rallied to the cause with organised marches. In Thailand, Body Shop customers wrote personal messages of support to victims of trafficking at the ECPAT Foundation Shelter. And in Denmark, store staff raised awareness by handing out leaflets in the city’s red light district.
Since its launch in 2009, Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People has gathered support in more than 40 countries worldwide.
2009 also saw the launch of The Body Shop® Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream. Proceeds from each hand cream sold are donated to ECPAT and other organisations that support victims of trafficking and help to fund prevention programmes. With one sold globally every 30 seconds, Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream has already raised a staggering £1m for charity. (I’ve done my bit and will vouch that it’s good stuff).
So what’s next? This summer the Body Shop will be launching a petition calling upon governments to implement strict anti-trafficking policies and legislation, and dedicate more resources to help victims of trafficking. But it doesn’t end there. Because this is a global campaign, their further objective is to join hands with thousands of other signatories around the world by taking the petitions to the United Nations in 2011.
If you want to do your bit to support this important campaign, follow the links below:
Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream is also available, in-store and online.
I too was really impressed by the campaign when staff in Bristol told me about it, and even happier that a majority of the money from the handcream is donated not just the usual few pence! That it smells great is an added bonus
Given that human trafficking is the same thing as slavery, it might be useful to reflect on how politicians are dealing with this problem now and what they have done in the past.
William Wilberforce convinced the public and his parliamentary colleagues that it was a bad thing, they outlawed it and the world was a better place. He had the advantage of belonging to a parliament which although it was part of a deeply flawed system, was nevertheless a sovereign one and it did have the power to create laws. The EU parliament does score over Wilberforce’s House of Commons in that women and people without property qualifications can vote for its members and be its members but it lacks one important feature; it does not have any very significant power.
This lack of power leads to absurdities like the one we see in this article. Instead of politicians asking for our mandate to do this or that, they ask for our support, in this case handing over responsibility for this terrible problem to us and asks that we alleviate it by purchasing hand cream!
Quite often politicians want us to support something and quite often my reaction is, you asked for our votes you got them, so do something. They are especially exasperating when the problem they want you to solve is one that they created.
This problem is not confined to the federal institutions of the EU and it is certainly not confined to Mary Honeyball; at least she is engaging with the problem and also with the public – something which seems to be impossible for so many of the political class.
It is important to recognise, in fairness, that the problem is as stated a global one but it is certainly an EU one and the wholesale opening of borders between poor countries and wealthy countries by the EU has certainly increased human trafficking/slavery.
One can see that raising funds to help the victims of trafficking/slavery is absolutely commendable but we are asked to help raise awareness. The awareness of whom, the public? Why us if we can only buy hand cream? If it is the politicians then we must have voted for some poor candidates if they don’t know what’s going on.
As for the Body Shop having a petition calling on governments to do something I hope they don’t include the EU Government. Being an unelected body of Marxists, Maoists and gravy train enthusiasts held to account by a powerless parliament they are unlikely to make a successful response.