To mark Anti-Slavery Day on 18 October and the Academy of Executive Coaching’s (AoEC) 25th anniversary, a small group of AoEC colleagues took part in a 25km fundraising walk in London.
Some 49.6 million people live in modern slavery in forced labour and forced marriage, according to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery (2022) from Walk Free, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration. Of the 27.6 million people trapped in forced labour, 17.3 million are in forced labour exploitation in the private economy, 6.3 million are in commercial sexual exploitation, and nearly 4 million are in forced labour imposed by state authorities.
In 2021, there were 12,727 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK – the highest number of referrals since records began in 2009, according to the Home Office. Some 43% of these victims were children, representing 5,468 potential child victims, and 31% of those referred were British nationals, according to the Home Office.
In September, the BBC revealed that a gang forced 16 people to work at McDonald’s and a bread factory for more than four years without the businesses noticing. UK businesses have a responsibility to be tackling modern slavery and human trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act.
The AoEC’s walk route linked sites connected to the transatlantic slave trade and modern slavery. The group began its walk in London Docklands, where a statue of Robert Milligan once stood. Milligan, a prominent slave owner, played a key role in constructing the docks. At the time of his death in 1809, he owned 526 enslaved Africans, forced to work on his family’s plantation in Jamaica. The statue stood in front of the London Museum Docklands – a converted warehouse once used to store sugar harvested by enslaved people until it was removed in 2020, in response to global movements challenging the glorification of those involved in slavery.
- The AoEC has set up a JustGiving page raising funds for Anti-Slavery International
VOLUME 19 ISSUE 6