Trafficking and Brexit
Charities are warning that Brexit may help child traffickers cross UK borders, reports Kieran Guilbert, of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
CHARITIES are worried that human traffickers smuggling children from northern France to Britain could slip under the radar if Europe’s policing and judicial agencies stop cooperating with Britain when it leaves the European Union.
HUMAN traffickers smuggling children from northern France to Britain could slip under the radar if law enforcers stop cooperating when Britain leaves the European Union, charities said last week.
Many children are trafficked to Britain from France’s northern port of Calais, where asylum seekers and economic migrants still gather, despite the dismantling of a huge camp known as ‘‘The Jungle’’ in late 2016, rights groups say.
Britain must ensure its crossborder partnerships with France to protect children and tackle trafficking were preserved after Brexit next March, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said.
Europe’s policing and judicial agencies, Europol and Eurojust, and the European Arrest Warrant, were vital to Britain’s efforts to find child victims and prosecute traffickers, Almudena Lara, head of policy at the NSPCC, said.
‘‘Britain has unfinished business with protecting the most vulnerable children from trafficking in Europe, and
Brexit threatens to further weaken its response to this issue,’’ Jakub Sobik, a spokesman for charity AntiSlavery International, said.
Joint investigations between British and European police forces could be jeopardised if Britain lost funding from Europe, Tamara Barnett, of the Human Trafficking Foundation, said.
‘‘The fear is that once we [Britain] leave [the European Union], our forces might not receive funding for this type of work, particularly since police resources are increasingly being cut anyway,’’ Barnett said.
The Home Office said the support Britain offered to trafficked children would not be affected by Brexit.
‘‘We are committed to strong cooperation on security, law enforcement and criminal justice now and after we leave [the European Union],’’ a Home Office spokesman said in a statement.
Of nearly 200 children living in camps in northern France referred to the NSPCC between August 2016 and November last year, about a third ended up in
Britain. The whereabouts of the others remain unknown, according to a report by the charity.
Many of the children were sexually abused, made to sleep in ratinfested tents and beaten by traffickers, after many of them had fled conflict and crisis further south, the report said.
Britain’s exit from the European Union could hamper its fight against trafficking at a time when the number of people being trapped in slavery was on the rise, fuelled by social media, the country’s antislavery body said earlier this month.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) said it was unclear how Brexit would affect Britain’s drive to crack down on human traffickers, but it was the key factor likely to impact the intelligence picture in coming years.
Britain passed the Modern Slavery Act in 2015 to crack down on traffickers, ensure businesses check supply chains for forced labour, and protect people most at risk of being enslaved.
In Britain, at least 13,000 people are estimated by the Government to be victims of modernday slavery — used in forced labour, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude — but police say the true figure is likely to be in the tens of thousands.