The Home Office has published their ‘New Plan for Immigration’ which includes a significant number of proposals to reform modern slavery legislation which will affect survivors of child exploitation. Wider measures relating to asylum policy will also be detrimental to survivors who also apply for asylum, a procedure which is already very challenging for many child victims to navigate. Read more
Maria Demosthenous, a senior child care solicitor with Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, has been awarded ECPAT UK’s Children’s Champion Award for 2020. The award is made in recognition of Maria’s outstanding commitment to child victims of trafficking in her local authority over the last 13 years. Read more
ECPAT UK has today released new resources informing Vietnamese migrants in the UK about their rights in the UK criminal justice system. Produced in partnership with World Vision Vietnam (WVV) for its Home Office-funded Tackling Modern Slavery project, the resources comprise a child friendly film and digital information resource, and a film and information resource for adults. Read more
ECPAT UK is alarmed at today’s news from the Home Office claiming there is widescale abuse of the National Referral Mechanism and announcing an overhaul of the Modern Slavery Act alongside the announcement of immigration reforms. While we are waiting to see details of the proposals this week and what it may mean for survivors of child trafficking and exploitation, we are very concerned about inaccuracies in the reporting of today’s statement. Read more
The Home Office has today released official statistics showing more children than ever before were identified as potential victims of trafficking in 2020. ECPAT UK is concerned that more children than ever need specialist support while resourcing for this support continues to fall, responses to child victims are inconsistent across the country and children face unnecessary delays to decisions about their cases. Read more
The government has announced that the Independent Child Trafficking Guardians service will be expanded to more parts of England in late Spring. The service is currently operational in one third of local authority areas in England and Wales. ECPAT UK welcomes the expansion of the scheme, which will provide more trafficked children with vital specialist support across the country but is concerned that there is still no timescale for full rollout of the service nationally. Read more
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has included the key concerns raised by ECPAT UK in its List of issues prior to reporting (LOIPR) of the combined sixth and seventh reports of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – part of the Committee’s examination of how well the UK is meeting its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Read more
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that the UK Government failed to protect victims of child trafficking and breached two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, in a landmark case. The Court ordered the UK Government to pay €90,000 EUR (£78,590 GBP) in compensation to two Vietnamese young people involved who had been convicted of crimes as children despite signs they had been trafficked. Read more
ECPAT UK has joined the Refugee Council and other leading national children's charities calling for the government to urgently provide every unaccompanied child with the specialist care they need, in a letter to the Children's Minister Vicky Ford MP. Read more
Members of AIESEC, a not-for-profit organisation run by students and recent graduates, have completed an around the world relay race to raise money for ECPAT UK - running a staggering total of 276.92km over 31 hours, 5 minutes and 15 seconds. Read more
The government has released its new strategy to tackle child sexual abuse. We welcome the government’s commitment to making sure all children, within and outside of the UK, are protected from sexual abuse and exploitation by UK nationals. Read more
This week, two more men were found guilty of manslaughter following the deaths of 39 Vietnamese men, women and children in a lorry in Essex last October. Our thoughts remain with the families and friends of all the victims. The case highlights the precarious journeys people are compelled to make due to a lack of safe and legal routes, which pushes desperate people into the hands of smugglers and traffickers. Read more
As we come to the end of 2020, I want to say a big thank you to for all for your continued support in what has been the most challenging of years for all of us. You’ve stuck with us when we needed it the most and for that we will be endlessly grateful. Read more
Following a fantastic response to our winter appeal, the ECPAT UK team is delivering festive hampers to members of our youth groups for young people affected by trafficking. Each hamper contains ‘something to read, something you need and something you want’ along with festive messages from our supporters who are responding generously to our appeal. Here’s a sneak peak at what's inside the hampers and our team of ECPAT elves doing the deliveries! Read more
The government has today published its response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation which is expected to be followed by an Online Harms Bill in early 2020. ECPAT UK welcomes this landmark proposal to keep children safe online. ECPAT UK welcomes the cross-party commitment to regulation of tech companies, recognition that this is a global problem requiring close collaboration with international partners and the proposed legal duty of care on tech companies to keep users safe. Read more
The Court of Appeal has ruled that the Secretary of State for Education unlawfully removed safeguards for children in care during the Coronavirus pandemic. Led by the charity Article 39, ECPAT UK and over 60 other child rights organisations publicly campaigned against the changes, introduced overnight under Statutory Instrument 445 without public consultation or parliamentary debate. Read more
The National Crime Agency (NCA) has successfully brought one of the most prolific child sexual abuse offenders to justice for crimes committed online against children in the UK and abroad, highlighting the central role of evidence from social media companies and joining a growing number of children’s charities, child rights advocates and public officials calling for Facebook to urgently halt plans to implement end-to-end encryption which leaves children at significant risk. Read more
The Home Office has released its evaluation of its Child Trafficking Protection Fund including our Partnership Against Child Trafficking (PACT) project, finding the project provided an “important pathway” to change the ways in which social care can reduce children’s vulnerability to trafficking and re-trafficking and contribute to improving local authority practice. Read more
A new assessment of the Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTG) service’s Regional Practice Coordinators (RPC) role has been released. ECPAT UK welcomes the report’s findings, including the positive impact of RPCs on child victims of exploitation and the professionals supporting them. However, we urge the government to immediately roll out the ICTG service across the country so that it is available to all who need this essential support. Read more
October is Black History Month and this year, our youth group members have led a series of workshops celebrating some of their favourite Black leaders, cultures, traditions and events. Over the past two weeks, members of our youth groups have each presented a part of Black history that is meaningful and inspiring to them, drawing on people and events from their own backgrounds and cultures as well as Black history in the UK and USA. Read more
The government is failing in its treatment of child victims of trafficking in a hostile immigration system, according to shocking new data obtained by ECPAT UK under the Freedom of Information Act ahead of the 10 year anniversary of the UK's Anti-Slavery Day. The data shows that 4,695 adults and children subject to immigration control were confirmed as victims of trafficking in the four-year period of 2016-2019. However just 28 child victims were granted discretionary leave to remain in the UK. Read more
Today, ECPAT UK gave evidence on the non-punishment principle for child victims of trafficking to the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) at an open session with civil society as part of the group’s evaluation of the UK. Read more
In her annual report laid before Parliament today, the UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner Dame Sara Thornton, has echoed ECPAT UK’s call for Independent Child Trafficking Guardians to be immediately rolled out nationally and reaffirmed her support for localised decision making power to determine individuals’ official status as victims of trafficking at a time when more children than adults have been identified as potential victims for the first time. Read more
Child trafficking and exploitation are abhorrent crimes against those who are inherently vulnerable due to their age. Our work centres on the rights of the child. We continue to be at the forefront or holding governments, institutions and organisations accountable for children’s rights and protection. ECPAT UK works in coalition with many other organisations in the UK and abroad. However we are not affiliated or associated with recent high profile online campaigns against UK child sex offenders. Read more
Statement from Patricia Durr, CEO of ECPAT UK, on the tragic death of a 16 year old Sudanese boy in the English Channel. Read more
Last month, the Home Office announced that from January 2021, it plans to expand the Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTG) service to more parts of England. However, ECPAT UK remains concerned that five years after being enshrined in law, the scheme is yet to be fully rolled out – leaving the majority of child victims of trafficking unable to access this vital support. Read more