Trafficking and the WI

The WI, trafficking and the UKPAC position

As you know, the UKPAC has, for many years, worked with other groups and organisations to combat violence against women, in all its forms. Clubs up and down the country have been or are working on projects relating to trafficking and there is hardly a club in the UK that is not supporting the work of its local Women’s Refuge. We are members of the Stop Violence against Women campaign and have lobbied extensively on the subject for a number of years. Last year we formed what we called our Flagship Project, to combat the violence on all fronts – and much work has already been done and a new strategy was outlined at our quarterly meeting earlier in November.

On 25 November – the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women - Harriet Harman, the Minister for Women, addressed the conference of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes. A transcript of that speech can be downloaded here.

During the speech Ms Harman said, “I hope that members of the NFWI will help protect women from being brought here from abroad and being forced into the sex trade. You can do this by looking at your local newspapers and seeing whether in the classified ads, amongst the skip hire and the lost pets, you see ads for women for sale.” Ms Harman urged WI members to report suspicious adverts to the newspaper editors.

On the BBC’s Newsnight that evening, Jeremy Paxman interviewed Antje Derks, the President of Ham and Petersham WI and Niki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes. Ms Adams stated that she was, “Sorry the WI had got involved” as she felt it would do more harm than good. It was not always clear from the adverts that they concerned trafficked women; many prostitutes advertised, quite legally, in newspapers and they may now be affected as well.

You can read more of the story on the BBC’s news page.

Some time ago, the UKPAC sought advise from the police authorities on the issue of sex adverts and were strongly advised not to get involved by complaining to the newspaper editors. The police, who are far better able to evaluate the advertisements than our members, found them extremely helpful in targeting traffickers and illegal operations. That has been our position ever since. We are writing to the Home Secretary, and will copy the letter to Harriet Harman and Theresa May, explaining our work and our position on this.