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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for olympics
4 results foundAuthor: GLE Consulting Title: The 2012 Games and Human Trafficking: Identifying Possible Risks and Relevant Good Practice From Other Cities Summary: This report reviews the potential impact of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on trafficking, in the context of a possible increase of people entering the UK due to human trafficking. While international and national laws are in place to combat trafficking, London boroughs and other organisations offer services that aim to mitigate the impact. Local organisations highlight good practice and the value of multi-agency working, close cooperation between agencies and maximising existing resources. This report briefly outlines the international and European legal and policy frameworks that exist to counter human trafficking, and summarises the laws, mechanisms and organisations that play a role in tackling trafficking and supporting its victims, which are relevant to, or active in, London. Multi-agency work and knowledge sharing is essential for offering support to victims. This research offers a framework for future European funding applications in the area of trafficking, which could complement existing services of boroughs and their partners. In addition, whereas many London local authorities already have expertise in tackling trafficking and supporting its victims, this research can assist those boroughs with less experience in the area. Details: London: London Councils, 2011. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 23, 2011 at: http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/policylobbying/crime/publications/2012humantrafficking.htm Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/policylobbying/crime/publications/2012humantrafficking.htm Shelf Number: 121112 Keywords: Human TraffickingOlympics |
Author: Jennings, Will Title: Mega-Events and Risk Colonisation: Risk Management and the Olympics Summary: This paper uses the idea of risk colonisation (Rothstein et al. 2006) to analyse how societal and institutional risks simultaneously make mega-events such as the Olympics a problematic site for risk management while contributing to the spread of the logic and formal managerial practice of risk management. It outlines how mega-events are linked to broader societal and institutional hazards and threats but at the same time induce their own unique set of organizational pathologies and biases. In this context, it is argued that the combination of societal and institutional risks create pressure for safety and security which in turn give rise to the growing influence of risk as an object of planning, operations and communication both in organisation of the Games and governance of the Olympic movement. This is consistent with the colonizing influence of risk over time: both in the creation of formal institutions (such as risk management teams and divisions) and the proliferation of the language of 'risk' as an object of regulation and control. Details: London: Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2012. 31p. Source: Internet Resource: Discussion Paper No. 71: Accessed October 8, 2015 at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/accounting/CARR/pdf/DPs/Disspaper71.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/accounting/CARR/pdf/DPs/Disspaper71.pdf Shelf Number: 136978 Keywords: Event PlanningOlympicsRisk ManagementSecuritySports |
Author: Lepp, Annalee Title: 2010 Winter Games Analysis on Human Trafficking Summary: Between February and August 2010, GAATW Canada researchers conducted a qualitative research project, funded by Public Safety Canada, on possible increases in transnational and domestic human trafficking in British Columbia in connection with the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games. Research involved examining available data on the link between trafficking in persons and previous mega sporting events, analyzing media, online, and public discussions that focused on human trafficking prior to and during the Olympic Games, and conducting telephone, in-person, and e-mail interviews with 61 key informants, federal and provincial representatives, enforcement personnel, members of non-governmental organizations, as well as legal and human rights advocates. In the process of investigating the main research question, the research team also considered the dynamics of pre-Olympic anti-trafficking discourses and campaigns, what trafficking in persons prevention measures were implemented by governmental, enforcement, and non-governmental sectors and the reported effectiveness of those strategies, as well as the key recommendations that emerged from interview participants. The interview data provided contrary evidence about whether or not there were indications that human trafficking had occurred prior to and during the 2010 Olympic Games. Nonetheless, without out ruling the possibility that human trafficking for the purposes of labour and sexual exploitation might have evaded detection with the risk of domestic trafficking into the commercial sex sector specifically mentioned, the vast majority of informants across stakeholder sectors suggested that they had no specific knowledge of or that there was no concrete and verifiable evidence of trafficking in persons for the purposes of sexual or labour exploitation linked to the 2010 Olympic Games. In addition, as of the end of August 2010, no trafficking in persons cases connected to the event had reached the level of investigation. There was also no strong evidence of a significant spike in male demand for paid sexual services during the Olympic Games. In the absence of evidence-based research, which has systematically assessed the fan base of or measured male demand for paid sexual services during mega sporting events, it is unclear whether this was a feature unique to what some interviewees described as a more "family-oriented" event like the Winter Olympics or mega sporting events more generally. Available data suggests, however, that during presumably less "family-centred" international sporting events like the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups, the anticipated or forecasted level of demand did not materialize. The key recommendations that emerged from the interview data included the following: - Examine the histories of and the lessons learned from previous international sporting events as well as the policies and practices implemented by other host nations/regions. This would include an analysis of the anticipated fan base. - Engage in an early assessment of the risk of human trafficking in the host country/region/city using an evidence-based approach, and develop appropriate prevention strategies accordingly. Labour trafficking should receive equivalent attention to trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation, and prevention initiatives, including guiding principles for employers, should be initiated during the infrastructure and venue construction phase. - Establish mechanisms based on a consistent definitional methodology to track trafficking in persons information, data, and measurements, and conduct data collection prior, during, and after the event. - Strategic planning and implementation should include the development of a clearly defined human trafficking prevention plan with milestones and benchmarks, the fostering of partnerships, networks, coordination, and information sharing among relevant government agencies, enforcement bodies, and with NGOs, and the establishment of appropriate investigative protocols and referral mechanisms to monitor the situation on the ground and to respond to the support needs of trafficked persons. Key partnerships and consultations on strategic planning should also involve Indigenous, youth, sex worker, and migrant worker organizations/advocates as well as grassroots community-based groups. - In consultation with relevant NGOs and community-based partners, ensure that relevant and funded service strategies are in place to serve the needs of trafficked persons, as well as irregular migrant workers (including free and confidential legal advice and representation, interpreters, and translation). - Conduct targeted trafficking in persons awareness training of enforcement personnel (police officers, immigration and border officials), criminal justice officials, labour inspectors, first responders and NGO partners, as well as private sector employers and employees in such areas as construction, hospitality services, and transportation. This instruction should also include "sensitivity training" of all security and enforcement officers seconded to the event. Special attention should be paid to non-discriminatory treatment of foreign nationals at ports of entry and temporary foreign workers regardless of labour site, as well as to the rights, safety, and needs of marginalized, stigmatized, vulnerable, and diverse local populations whose lives and work might be negatively impacted by the influx of tourists, an enhanced security and enforcement apparatus in their communities, as well as by certain anti-trafficking interventions. - Devise and initiate a national or regional trafficking in persons public awareness campaign, with input from all relevant community stakeholders. Such a campaign should be accurate, evidence-based, and adhere to the principle of "do no harm." While the above recommendations are consistent with those found in assessments of other mega sporting events, two additional themes emerged from the interview data. The first focused on the important need to foster collaborative partnerships and consultations on strategic planning with communities with on-the-ground knowledge of trafficking in persons and those whose lives and work might be adversely affected by the enhanced security and enforcement presence and anti-trafficking interventions during international sporting events. In the context of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, the beginnings of such a model was evident and could be extended to include other grassroots, community-based representatives. The second theme concentrated on the critical necessity to adopt an evidence-based strategic approach and practice. Applicable to governmental, enforcement, and non-governmental agencies, this underlying principle would shape the planning and implementation of human trafficking prevention strategies, public awareness and media campaigns, as well as necessary assistance measures for trafficked persons should the need materialize. Details: Ottawa: Public Safety Canada, 2013. 85p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 9,. 2017 at: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/wntr-gms-2010/wntr-gms-2010-eng.pdf Year: 2013 Country: Canada URL: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/wntr-gms-2010/wntr-gms-2010-eng.pdf Shelf Number: 131176 Keywords: Forced LaborHuman TraffickingOlympicsProstitutesProstitutionSex WorkersSporting Events |
Author: Cooper, Kate Title: Exploitation and Trafficking of Women: Critiquing narratives during the London Olympics 2012 Summary: his report was commissioned by the Central American Women's Network (CAWN) to inform its work around the role of civil society and the media in shaping public understanding of different forms of exploitation experienced by women, in particular migrant women, in the context of major sporting events. It is based on an extensive study of press coverage of the issues of trafficking and exploitation of women during the London Olympics 2012 and examines critically the range of narratives underlying the approach to these issues in the print media. In addition, the report includes in-depth analysis of the campaigns mounted by five civil society organizations (CSOs) and compares the different approaches and strategies applied in each case, assessing the reasons for the varying degrees of success of each, respectively. An important aim of the study was to identify lessons and draw up recommendations based on the experience of the London Olympics that can be applied to other forthcoming major sporting events. The report highlights the fact that dominant narratives about trafficking not only conflate issues of trafficking with those of immigration and sexual exploitation but also frequently fail to employ the necessary analytical rigour. Prior to the Olympics, narratives circulated within Westminster and in the media predicting a rise in the number of women that would be trafficked to London for the London Olympics. The forecasts involved extremely large numbers and focused in the main on an expected rise in the number of women to be trafficked for sexual exploitation. During this period, many migrant women 'seen' in London, particularly those who could be characterized as 'exotic', were assumed to be trafficked into the capital for the Olympics and to be controlled by criminal gangs. Media reports circulating around this time (and in general) illustrate the very negative and stereotyped ways in which migrant women are portrayed, particularly in the tabloid press. However, the ensuing 'moral panic' about trafficking and sexual exploitation was not backed up by any evidence. Indeed, a body of evidence already existed prior to the Olympics demonstrating that major sporting events do not contribute to a rise in the incidence of trafficking for sexual exploitation. It is unclear why no one in government seemed aware of such research. The prediction that London would be 'flooded' with 'sex slaves' proved to be a myth. Indeed, the numbers of actual Victims of Trafficking (VoTs), as defined in the Palermo Protocol, was low during the Olympics - as it had been prior to the event. Over time, attention has been drawn to this discrepancy by a wide variety of stakeholders: CSOs, sex worker rights activists, academics and some journalists from the broadsheets. Yet despite the existence of this by now wellestablished counter-narrative that questions and contradicts the prevalent assumptions, the dominant framework within which most trafficking continues to be constructed is that of sexual exploitation. At the same time, very little attention was given in both government discourse and the media either to the global inequalities that drive women to seek a better life abroad or to the benefits the economies of richer countries enjoy because of the role that migrants play in providing cheap labour. In particular, the role of the UK's trade and development policies in perpetuating and deepening these inequalities was not examined in any of the mainstream narratives. Nor was any understanding shown of the fact that restrictive immigration policies contribute to migrant women's vulnerabilities and potential exploitation. Finally, no account was taken of the fact that the percentage of migrant women in the UK is scarcely higher today than it was a few decades ago. Even though the number of VoTs is low, migrant women in the UK face a wide range of problems. The London based Latin American Women's Rights Service is a CSO that works at the grassroots with women from Latin American countries who find themselves in a variety of exploitative situations. Because the official definition of VoT is very narrow, LAWRS encounters few women who are helped by trafficking legislation and believes that the law is too restrictive and should be replaced by a broader approach in which the human rights of all migrant women are addressed. Stop The Traffik, a government-funded inter-governmental campaign, was set up to address the predicted rise in trafficking during the period of the Olympics. Although the premise was false, the initiative is to be commended for encompassing other forms of trafficking apart from trafficking for sexual exploitation, thus breaking somewhat with he narrow focus on prostitution. However, while the campaign itself achieved high visibility, the number of reports of suspected trafficking was extremely low, a result that throws into question the government's strategy on this issue and, indeed, the utility of the trafficking legislation as a means of addressing exploitation. X:talk, the third CSO examined in this report, is a sex workers organisation, which was concerned that the government would use the wildly exaggerated predictions of a rise in the number of women trafficked into the UK for the purposes of sexual exploitation as an excuse to aggressively police, raid and shut down some workplaces within the sex industry. Such practices have been shown time and again to endanger the lives of all sex workers by displacing them from their peers, from regular clients and from the outreach services that keep in contact with them. The 'abolitionist' take on sex work and associated narratives, prevalent in the current and previous governments, obscure the wider reality that trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation is one out of a wide range of exploitative situations in which migrant women can find themselves. In addition, the focus on sexual exploitation, rather than on sex work as work, results in less meaningful intervention. Current narratives about the issue are mostly constructed within a framework of implicit moral disapproval, which fails to address the important health and safety concerns of all sex workers, whether migrant or not. Moreover, it appears that government officials, both within the current and previous governments, subscribe to a particular brand of feminist ideology that that does not recognise or respect the agency of women who choose to become sex workers. Thus, despite the success of its media campaign from the perspective of press coverage, the x:talk campaign was not successful in achieving one of its main policy aims, namely a moratorium on the policing of sex workers during the period under analysis and, indeed, x:talk was excluded from wider debates around these issues. Migration is a development strategy for millions of women all over the world who seek out work in different parts of the service sector and other informal spheres in order to subsist. Restrictive immigration policies and a focus on trafficking and sexual exploitation do nothing to alleviate their vulnerability. What is needed is an approach that addresses and is able to legislate against the whole range of different forms of exploitation that take place in workplaces both in the UK and further along global supply chains. However, there were some examples of a more integrated approach with a focus on wider exploitation and the human rights of women: the multi-agency Human Trafficking and London 2012 Games Network, as well as the Play Fair Campaign, of which War on Want was a key part. War on Want's campaign, contributed both to the work of the Network and to Playfair and drew attention to the shocking labour conditions of many workers, mostly women, in the factories producing goods for export to the UK during the Olympics. A wide range of events ensured that their campaign figured in the media, though much ingenuity and imagination were required to gain the press's interest. This makes a marked contrast with the widespread coverage in the tabloid press of 'sex trafficking', in which any piece of news was seen as a hook for carrying yet another story on the issue. Responding to these difficulties in relation to attracting press interest, War on Want successfully developed a range of different media strategies, involving the innovative use of social media as a means of communicating directly with its supporters. The fourth campaign studied is the one developed and coordinated by Anti-Slavery International in collaboration with the Institute for Human Rights and Business. Entitled The Staff Wanted Initiative, this campaign sought to address exploitative working conditions in the poorly regulated sectors of construction, domestic work, cleaning, catering and hospitality during the London Olympics. This initiative helped business identify who is controlling cheap labour, how it is coming in and the level of workers' pay. This focus on workers' rights, rather than anti-immigration, trafficking or the abolition of any particular sector of work, serves as an example of good practice for employers in other areas of poorly regulated or informal work. This report argues that governments would do better to focus on the human rights of all migrants in the UK, not just those who fall into the restrictive definition of 'trafficked' people and many of whom experience exploitation in many different forms. In order for this change to occur, CSOs will need to work effectively together not only by campaigning against particular legislation but by also exerting pressure to counter particular ideologies that impede a reasoned and rational debate. This is particularly the case with sex work which, if it were conceptualized as "work", would lead to the formulation of holistic approaches based on global justice and the human rights of all migrant workers. During the London Olympics 2012 the campaigns analysed in this report experienced various degrees of success. Factors linked to success rates include: the visibility of these CSO during the Olympics, their ability to work with other CSOs and agencies, the palatability of their message and their effectiveness in getting their message out using various media outlets. In some cases, the use of social media allowed them to communicate directly to their public, reducing the importance of the conventional media. Nonetheless, high level campaigns in which CSOs were able to work together effectively and which managed to gain high media visibility stood the highest chance of effecting change. This is how, for example, the Playfair Campaign 2012 was able to insist on corporations disclosing their supply chains. But the strategy needs to be further developed if change is to occur at the level of ideology and legislation and the first step is for all CSOs to find a common, integrated narrative that focuses on global justice and the human rights of all women and to use this as a campaign framework. Based on the above analysis, the report concludes with recommendations directed at CSOs, governments and corporations. These recommendations are aimed at protecting the human rights of all women and ensuring responsible actions and media coverage during future sporting events around the world. Details: London: Central America Women's Network. 2014. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 28, 2017 at: http://www.cawn.org/assets/Exploitation%20and%20Trafficking%20of%20Women_.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.cawn.org/assets/Exploitation%20and%20Trafficking%20of%20Women_.pdf Shelf Number: 131504 Keywords: Human TraffickingMigrant WomenOlympicsSex TraffickingSexual ExploitationSporting Events |