Trafficking

Charities in the UK have critised a police report which they say undermines the problem of human trafficking in Britain.   The report was released by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), and claims there are currently only 2,600 trafficked women across the UK.  A senior police official has argued this figure is more in line with female trafficking statistics for London alone.

A senior police official slammed the report as "amateurish."   The report also claims that there are no women in the UK who have been trafficked in from Africa.

Codenamed Project Acumen, the ACPO report built its conclusions on UK trafficking after interviewing 254 women in London brothels.  It then estimated the size of the problem across the UK based on these figures and information garnered from newspaper reports.

But anti-trafficking charities across the UK have slammed the report, saying it greatly undermines the seriousness of the problem and how it should be tackled.


Cherifa Atoussi from the Child Trafficking Office for Africa [the group may actually be called, Africans Unite Against Child Abuse] said: "This denial is actually empowering the people behing human trafficking. I would like to know what the intention is behind this report and where they got their figures from because they are contrary to what we have on the ground here."

Earlier this month the House of Lords assured church leaders that countering human trafficking in the build-up to the Olympic Games in 2012 was a top priority and that police provision would be bolstered over the coming year to help them tackle the issue.

The above information comes from an article on the Christian World Mission site. 

One of the issues suggested for World Blog Day is trafficking, both of women and children.