Body Shop: STOP Sex Trafficking of Children & Young People

September 2011, Singapore – The Body Shop Singapore announced on 23 August 2011 that its STOP SEX TRAFFICKING OF CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE campaign has achieved an incredible 114,886 petitions for positive change and action against trafficking.  Along with 6.9 million collected from over 65 countries across The Body Shop network, these petitions will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 29 September 2011.

Approximately 1.2 million children and young people are trafficked for sexual exploitation .  Human trafficking is the third largest international crime after illegal drugs and arms tracficking, existing in every continent, region and country in the world, including Singapore.

Josephine Chow, General Manager of The Body Shop Singapore explained that “it was one of the dying wishes of our late founder, Dame Anita Roddick that this, the “modern-day slave trade” be brought to an end.”

Key milestones achieved for this campaign include:

• Hitting the iconic landmark of 6.9 million signatures and still going making this the largest campaign to date for The Body Shop globally.
• Release of a research report “Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) Research Report” together with campaign partner ECPAT International in June 2011.  This was instrumental to help the public understand the situation of child sex trafficking issues and also for Body Shop and its campaign partners to derive practical action plans to effect long term change based on the findings and recommendations of the report.
• Since the launch of the campaign in August 2009, close to S$270,000 from sales of the Soft Hands Kind Hearts hand creams and STOP Bag for life.

• On the home front, the Singapore Government and local authorities have made significant progress towards tackling the trafficking issue:

1. The Singapore Inter-agency Taskforce on trafficking in persons (TIP) notes that as a result of the Singapore Government’s efforts, Singapore was upgraded to Tier 2 from the Tier 2 Watchlist in the recent US Department of State’s TIP Report 2011.
2. Local authorities have recognized the need to continually step up efforts in increasing vigilance and responsiveness towards threat of Singapore increasingly becoming an attractive potential destination for human trafficking syndicates, especially as it grows as a hub for travel, tourism and economic activity.
3. Co-chaired by Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Manpower and comprising representatives from the Police, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, Ministry of Community Development, Youth & Sports, Ministry of Health, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney-General’s Chambers, the Singapore Taskforce was formed and are currently drafting a National Plan of Action for Singapore to tackle both sex and labour trafficking. They are also studying the possibility of future accession to the UN TIP Protocol.

This campaign first started this campaign on August 2009 where the main objective was to raise awareness and funds.  A year later, the objective was global petition and continued fundraising and in the third year, there were campaign hero activities as well as handovers to national governments and the United Nations.

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