everywhere in the world even trafficking
is a crime that touches every community
even our community highlands in my human
trafficking I'm talking about the
criminal process and maintenance of
controlling another currency in order to
exploit them and during my time at Stop
Me traffic Iceland combined with my
personal experience as an immigrant to
this country and he would trafficking
survivor myself I've come to understand
that one of the largest obstacles in
combating human trafficking today is
ironically one of its greatest homes but
that's us it's everyday people like you
and me more connected to this issue than
we may immediately realize that's
because well there's so many good
hard-working people in the services and
the institutions in Iceland the nature
of human trafficking is also so greatly
influenced at a community level and so
as members of the shared community today
I'd like to talk to you about our
personal power in human trafficking as
well as the responsibility that comes
with that but first I'd like to talk a
little bit about what human trafficking
actually means by looking at the
criteria provided by the United Nations
that divides trafficking into three
different elements the act the means and
the purpose which is where we understood
like the what the hell of the why of
human trafficking basically you have
what is happening which is that the
traffickers are taking and in one of the
actions listed under the Act they're
doing that by controlling their victim
there were any method to stood under the
means why they are doing that has heard
the purpose of the crime the
exploitation which is the actual thus
treatment of the victim that actually
benefits the trafficker in some way and
as you can see this is broad criteria
this might be a little different from
the popular culture the tension but
human trafficking in a very narrow
profile of victims being tied up and
hidden away moved from place to place
right gang is for financial gain
and while these pieces are real and they
need to be taken seriously they just
they can't be our only understanding of
the Act needs purpose criteria and in
fact sense of nothing of movements time
for the benefits or victim or traffic or
demographic at all give you an example
from my home state of Kentucky in the
United States there was the case of
foster parents who forced their foster
daughter to have sex with a man in
exchange for a couch aggressively
different narratives but still you have
those traffickers transferring their
victim by controlling her to sexually
exploit her for that couch and I'd like
you to think that the obvious power
imbalance here because it's not the
traffic Iceland we understand that human
trafficking can really happen to anyone
but there's a reason that we focus on
formable populations and that's because
human trafficking victims are usually
those with the weakest ties with their
welfare systems the support networks
this is because those pre-existing
vulnerabilities already have that power
balance that the trafficker can then
just step in and manipulate to establish
control over the victim says having to
create that power advance meaning
ultimately vulnerable populations can
make trafficking easier so to bring this
all back home to Iceland I've heard so
many times here that's people can't
understand how trafficking can happen
here this is something that I've heard
in a lot of communities but the thing is
can we not see that we have vulnerable
populations in our society have we not
seen the media coverage of the rising
drug use they be two testimonies that
flooded our social
accounts the labor protests the asylum
seeker refugee protests we are
constantly during the testimony of
vulnerable populations fighting to be
heard
we made it not immediately make this
connection but these are at-risk groups
with human trafficking so when I first
moved here in the 2017 I wasn't
necessarily caught up in this one
statistic that Iceland it's only has one
successful conviction of human
trafficking instead I was thinking about
vulnerability I was thinking about the
25 percent of Icelandic woman who
experienced domestic violence that
year's 1096 submitted asylum seeker
applications or the 2016-2017 jump of
192 249 missing child search arrests and
when I began actually talking to people
in the field they would tell me that the
symptoms of human trafficking here were
beyond what they had the resources to
combat accordingly but they desperately
needed regular people like us Jim shared
his urgency without all its permits just
won't prioritize us in the same way and
so it was a combination of me hearing
these testimonies of potential victims
people in the field have worked with the
cases I saw myself matching this
criteria but also just the perspective
of immigrants who came to this country
and was trying to navigate a system so
completely different from what I was
used to that really made me understand
that while our institutions and our
services are so crucial to fighting
human trafficking
that's the worldview of these at-risk
people is primarily molded by his
personal interactions we have in our
community and when I was doing my report
on human trafficking in Iceland I
interviewed a union worker who put this
quite well she talked about this sort of
bubble that some foreign workers were
living in and but that she was referring
to their isolated worldview maybe only
knowing a few people maybe they had a
link
you're a cultural barrier and that will
restrict their access to information in
interaction in general with other people
so that really got me thinking into
these sort of small moments that we have
in our communities that maybe we take
them for granted but they can actually
be extremely influential especially to a
person with a restricted bubble and I
can tell you as an immigrant myself that
from four years ago meeting my first
Icelandic friends to more a year it's
moving here and then another two years
now came I hope that my understanding of
Iceland and how this country works has
drastically changed my bubble has
expanded just because of this mass
accumulation of those small individual
moments which got me thinking to this
sort of social power that we all have
until we can actually influence another
person's perspective in worldview this
idea of social power came to me in light
of this idea of economic buying power
which is this idea in human trafficking
where as consumers every day with our
purchases we then mitigate or facilitate
human trafficking on a global scale and
this is because as consumers we never
just buy products we buy systems meaning
when we go to the store and we create a
demand for that product by purchasing
yeah we also create a demand for the
entire line of production that thought
it there so if we don't actually educate
ourselves on how to be responsible
educated consumers and educate ourselves
on the businesses that we supports we
end up actually upholding these
exploitive businesses and so this idea
was social power was to our decisions
and our behaviors also upholds
exploitable vulnerable communities can
we mitigate or facilitate trafficking at
a local level so let's ask ourselves how
do we listen to our former populations
do we personally show the information
that those struggles were hearing or
maybe if we've had a rough week we shy
away from news that isn't positive when
we go downtown
food and there's a foreign waiter do we
honestly say that we're always patient
with those language barriers or at we go
to a party we hear a sexist joke are we
the type of person to go and confront
that person or we were worried about
having a good time or like the anti-nazi
demonstration not too long ago in
Reykjavik maybe we didn't want to
support that effort but when the day
came it was raining and suddenly it was
too inconvenient to go the point I'm
trying to make here is that all of our
decisions they make seem trivial in the
grand scheme of human trafficking but
really of all scales from eye contact to
marching the streets until the gender
wage gap there are all our votes and our
Society for what we think is and is not
acceptable behavior meaning every single
thing that we do equally everything that
we do not do all contributes to this
collective community that we all share
so if we ever were to eradicate human
trafficking from our communities and
combat that vulnerability inside of them
just as we need to educate ourselves to
be responsible consumers we need to
educate ourselves to be responsible
community members understand the issues
going on around us and so that we can
make conscious mindful votes to applaud
inclusive societies that don't tolerate
the marginalization of other people that
put them at risk for human trafficking
and when it comes to the social power to
influence and strengthen our communities
this can significantly prevent at-risk
groups from being exploited but it can
also help break down barriers victims
are currently facing with a trying
chopper help and I'm saying this after
looking at the patterns I've seen
Iceland's of victims who are experienced
experiencing discrimination and
victim-blaming when they try to reach
services some of these accounts have
been actually pretty public you might
have seen it yourself foreign workers
and local Facebook groups reaching out
about their rights only depend on
lifelessly picked apart for their
decisions blamed for being too
irresponsible not to be scammed or in me
to testimony that was published in
Iceland's of a woman who was loud EBE
hoping that her neighbor would hear a
cries for help only to be later told by
that same neighbor that she needed more
respect for herself so that she came to
be treated that way and these narratives
are not only heartless but they're
dangerous but if we're going to pretend
that we're different from the people
that were to kill victims
we can't just believe that were
different our beliefs are not visible we
need to be proactive and actively use
our space that we have in our daily
lives to offer a representation of a
community safe to escape to because when
it comes to escape these stronger
communities could significantly help
those cases reach into services but we
also have to understand that the way
things are now the vast majority of
these cases are only reaching services
through some kind of third party
intervention and sometimes that's a
service like the labor unit inspection
but other times it's a regular person
it's the bystander though to serve the
concerned co-worker the friend the
better neighbor who actually acts as a
bridge to connect that person to
services they need so why it is
important to understand their social
power in creating our communities we
need to know that living in those
communities there's always that
possibility that we could come across
someone it's only when over escape and
that we need to understand the sort of
bridge power that we have where we could
make that connection
between not someone and the services
they need and for this reason we need to
be ready and we need to be willing to
act on those opportunities we cannot
afford to waste our time wondering if
the noise and our building the yelling
that are building late at night the
student violence or the consideration
past homeless people downtown and wonder
if they're just too lazy to see the
available services here if there's
something large or wrong about an
immigrant handing out Icelandic note
cards with bank information when they
don't actually speak a word of the
language themselves we can't afford to
casually wonder on our summer holiday
when we're staying in a guest house why
doing these et workers doing all of the
work at ours we wouldn't end her work
ourselves and I do understand that this
sees something do something approach of
bystander intervention is far easier
said than done there's always going to
be that room to keep wondering with that
lingering doubts and uncertainty but the
thing is these are what opportunities
look like and they'd be the only
opportunities we'd get so I of course I
would encourage you to familiarize
yourself to the signs of human
trafficking I'd also like everyone to be
aware that on some level we already know
what abnormal behavior and our home
looks like we know generally what a
fearful or a vulnerable person looks
like what a lack of agency may look like
or an abusive relationship and I'm
saying this because I've talked to so
many people here who may have never had
a human trafficking training but they
say that they saw or they heard
something that they had a bad feeling
about it and I would say that we need to
trust those bad feelings because we
don't need to be certain if we see
something alarming because that's enough
of a reason when you do see a red flag
you can go up to that person you can try
talking to them to see if they're okay
and then act as a bridge trying to
connect them to services
Meishan but you could also be a British
by contacting a service with information
you have or the information of people
around you in that situation have and
that service can then follow up with
that person in that situation and buy
services it depends on the situation but
I'm talking about police labor news the
violets interview out the need or if
you're not sure you can always contact
us and we can help guide you through it
stop traffic I sense but the point I'm
trying to make here is what that
information there's always something
that we can do and for the price of
human lives we can't afford to walk away
from those red signs those red flags and
do nothing we have to accept that
opportunity used to help one another are
probably going to be uncomfortable but
they are likely to come with
instructions and victims are not always
going to look or behave in the ways that
cater to our understanding of their
trauma that's fighting human trafficking
is going to require us to take these
leaps of faith with what is even if
they're outside of her comfort zone even
if it is us being wronged or feeling a
little foolish if we end up bothering
somebody for no reason her called
paranoid by our peers we have to be
braver than that we have to be better
than that but there's just a smidge of a
possibility that somebody's only
opportunity to escape into live is on us
human trafficking isn't happening in
these faraway off stratification as it's
happening communities communities that
we collectively create and share every
single day that we are deeply connected
to one another even in the smallest of
moments if we can just pay attention
because in those small moments we
absolutely have power and the lives and
the problems of other people power that
extends all the way to the life-or-death
crime of human trafficking so how will
we spend it
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you