Today's News Headlines
GOV.UK: UK and Vietnam sign agreement to tackle human trafficking, 1 Apr 2025
- The agreement commits both countries to stop traffickers from exploiting vulnerable people by discouraging dangerous journeys, enhancing information sharing and co-ordinating efforts to disrupt trafficking. It builds on a memorandum of understanding signed by the 2 countries in 2018.
Big Issue: I was trafficked and forced to work 23 hours a day. How was I meant to return to normality? 2 Apr 2025
- Ilja Abbattista was forced to work for up to 23 hours a day in red light districts and ‘gentleman’s clubs’ across Europe for three years, the victim of a brutal sex trafficking scheme when she was just a teenager. After she escaped, it continued to haunt her, and she struggled to adjust to life after modern slavery.
OSCE: 25th Conference of the Alliance against Trafficking in Persons, 31 Mar – 1 Apr 2025
- The Alliance against Trafficking in Persons Conference is an annual gathering of key stakeholders from across the OSCE region aiming to raise the political profile of the fight against trafficking in human beings (THB) and discuss emerging topics and trends in this area. Watch the conference here:
British Transport Police: Three Modern Day Slavery charges secured by BTP County Lines taskforce, 31 Mar 2025
- Intelligence led officers to deploy to Northampton, Kettering and Corby stations in January in a bid to dismantle and disrupt County Lines gangs who use the rail network to transport drugs and exploit vulnerable people.
Iowa Capital Dispatch: Senate subcommittee approves bill establishing ‘human smuggling’ crime, 1 Apr 2025
- “These new state-level criminal offenses would just lead to increased targeting of immigrants and their allies in our state, increased fear in immigrant communities, and additional cost to the taxpayers,” Balcarcel said. “If we want to protect victims of human trafficking, we should direct those resources to centres that provide direct services to victims and to fix the immigration system.”
Notre Dame Law School: ND Law Global Human Rights Clinic research collaboration with International Justice Mission on forced labour and human trafficking in the Philippines, 1 Apr 2025
- Notre Dame Law School's Global Human Rights Clinic completed its research collaboration with the International Justice Mission, K&L Gates Singapore, and Lexis Nexis Reed Elsevier Philippines researched the legal framework for international and regional cooperation for the Philippines to address forced labour and human trafficking
BNE Intelli-news: Russian cult leader nabbed in Argentine human-trafficking swoop, 1 Apr 2025
- Konstantin Rudnev, the 57-year-old founder of the Ashram Shambala sect, was intercepted alongside his followers at airports in Bariloche and Buenos Aires on March 31 while heading to Brazil. The investigation began when a young Russian woman arrived at a hospital in Bariloche to give birth, raising immediate concerns among medical staff.
The Independent: White House digs in after mistakenly deporting Maryland father to El Salvador, 1 Apr 2025
- Trump administration lawyers claim the deportation of Abrego Garcia and his subsequent incarceration in El Salvador’s CECOT prison was the result of an “administrative error” that can’t be remedied because the government is powerless to get him back from the Salvadoran government despite a close relationship between Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele and President Donald Trump.
