£3.7m for victims of human trafficking
19 March 2009
Victims of human trafficking will be helped to escape prostitution and domestic servitude following the award of a new £3.7 million government grant to the POPPY Project.
The POPPY Project has been providing places of refuge and vital support to hundreds of victims of human trafficking since 2003, backed by £5.8 million government support. This new investment will allow them to build on this work by:
- providing more victims across the UK with a safe haven
- expanding the number of support workers available to assess the needs of individual victims and offer them specialised packages of support
- ensuring increased access to counselling, health and psychological assistance for victims
- expanding the community outreach team and locating workers within the UK Human Trafficking Centre to work in partnership with the police, UK Border Agency and other partners to help identify victims in the community early and refer them into the appropriate support services
- enabling more victims to access independent legal advice
- creating a new national coordinator who will set minimum standards of support and help local areas deliver targeted support for victims.
Justice Minister Maria Eagle said:
'Human Trafficking thrives on the vulnerability of women. They are often subjected to multiple crimes including rape, physical violence, kidnapping and threats. This has no place in today's society.
'Very often the victims of these crimes are hidden from view and have no idea how to escape. Charities like the POPPY Project offer them the vital and specialist help they need.
'The funding we have announced today will offer victims of Human Trafficking across the UK much needed support.'
Denise Marshall, Chief Executive of the POPPY Project, added:
'We are happy to be able to announce that the POPPY Project has been awarded the government tender for work supporting trafficked women. As an agency long committed to providing high quality support services and promoting best practice nationally and internationally, we are gratified by this recognition of the work that we do.
'The funding will enable us to expand our services to include support for women trafficked into domestic servitude, and we are pleased that this form of exploitation has now been recognised as a gendered form of violence. We will also be working with new partners to expand our services on a national level.
'We look forward to working with the Home Office and UK Border Agency regarding implementation of the European Convention and we will ensure that victims of trafficking are identified as such and receive the support they need and deserve.'
This work is just one part of a wider strategy to make the UK a hostile environment for traffickers and identify and protect victims. The government has published a comprehensive UK Action Plan to tackle trafficking head on, and last year the UK ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Trafficking in Human Beings.
The government, police, Serious Organised Crimes Agency and specialist organisations, like the POPPY Project, continue to work together to rescue and protect victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation as well as identify, disrupt, arrest and bring to justice those involved in criminal activity.
Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality, also today announced £1.6 million for sexual violence charities, including Rape Crisis Centres, across England and Wales.
Notes to editors
- As part of the UK's commitment towards implementing the Council of Europe Convention on Action against the Trafficking in Human Beings (which comes into force on 1 April) £3.7m is being awarded by the Ministry of Justice and Home Office over two years.
- Key benefits of ratifying the convention include:
- a new National Referral Mechanism, providing a nationally agreed process to help frontline staff identify victims of trafficking and offer them support
- strengthened arrangements for looking after victims, including a 45 day reflection and recovery period and the possibility of a one-year residence permit for victims
- better support for victims in giving information to police, which will help authorities bring those who exploit them to justice.
- The UK has a comprehensive victim-centred strategy in place to tackle human trafficking, contained in an action plan launched in March 2007 and updated on 2nd July 2008.
- The UK is a primarily a destination state for human trafficking and the most common source regions for victims trafficked into the sex industry are Eastern Europe, China/East Asia, South East Asia and Africa.
- Home Office research suggests that the total social and economic costs of trafficking in the UK is estimated to be around £1bn for 2003. The UKHTC funding has almost doubled over the next two years from £834,000 in 2007/8 to £1.7 million in £2008/9, and £1.6 million in 2009/10.