Britain’s failure to fully grasp the nature or scale of modern slavery and implement a landmark law compounds victims’ suffering and leaves them at risk of repeat trafficking, a parliamentary committee said yesterday.
The government is unable to track progress in its fight against slavery as it does not know how much money it is spending and it lacks the data or strategies to understand the crime, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.
Suspected victims face a long wait to learn whether they are to be treated as a survivor of slavery and entitled to help, causing further distress and anxiety, a PAC report said.
“Victims of modern slavery can face unimaginable horrors, but the government’s good intentions have yet to result in coherent action to help them,” PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier said.
“The government cannot hope to target resources in an effective manner until it properly understands the scale and nature of the challenge,” Hillier said in a statement. “The government must get a grip on what works and what doesn’t.”
Regarded as a leader in the global drive to end slavery, Britain passed the Modern Slavery Act in 2015 to crack down on traffickers, force businesses to check their supply chains for forced labor and protect people at risk of being enslaved.
Yet anti-slavery activists say the law has not yet made a serious dent in the illicit trade in Britain, where the government estimates that at least 13,000 people are victims of forced labor, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude.
Britain is working to improve victim support and eradicate slavery by requiring firms to act to clean up their supply chains, the British Home Office said.
“The PAC recognizes that the UK is ahead of many countries in responding to modern slavery and the government ... will consider its recommendations carefully,” a Home Office spokesman said.
The committee’s report said the Home Office did not know whether modern slavery victims were receiving adequate care, what happened to them after they left the government’s support system or whether they might have been enslaved again.
“[Britain’s] strategy seems to be focused on finding the initial crime, but without a proper follow-up,” Anti-Slavery International’s Jakub Sobik said.
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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