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The Body Shop has partnered with anti-slavery organizations Somaly Mam Foundation and ECPAT to create the Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People campaign. As part of this campaign, The Body Shop launched a petition last week, to collect signatures to be presented “to an assembly at the United Nations as well as to various lawmakers around the country” (according to an email sent from The Body Shop to Free the Slaves.) Their goal it to get $1.5 million signatures in five months. As of this writing, they already have over 860,000. The petition’s purpose seems to be mostly about raising awareness, rather than offering clear cut solutions. But, as a certain PSA from the 1980s used to say, “knowing is half the battle.” There are still an estimated 27 million people enslaved in the world today.
The Body Shop also created the Soft Hands Kind Heart hand cream as part of this campaign. Proceeds go to Somaly Mam and ECPAT.
Free the Slaves recognized the work of Somaly Mam Foundation last year, when we bestowed our annual Frederick Douglass Award to Sina Vann, the leader of the organization’s Voices for Change program. Vann is a survivor of sexual slavery who was emancipated in a raid organized by Somaly Mam.
Click here to see Sina Vann in action.
