Action called for on human trafficking

‘A duty to let the community know this is a public safety issue’

Only two of multiple agencies sent a letter calling for their support for public action on human trafficking in Niagara have responded since it was circulated last month, its author says.

Krystal Snider, who leads Collaborative Community Solutions, an anti-human-trafficking training and consulting firm, sent the letter in mid-March. It called on the recipients to draw attention to human trafficking by addressing three specific actions in a statement that would be released to the public.

Snider said the letter was sent to more than 30 agencies and organizations, and the two responses received did not include a commitment to take the suggested actions.

“People have engaged with it online that I sent it to and so have survivors, but it’s devastating to send a call to action to an entire community to do what is a moral and ethical … and to have no response … It’s so sad,” she said.

The two agencies that replied were Westview Centre 4 Women and Niagara Region.

The letter was sent in the wake of recent reports of the existence of human trafficking farms in Niagara.

The three actions Snider’s letter calls for are: informing the wider community when and where trafficking is happening, leaving lines of communication open for survivors to reach out; reallocating funding to support front-line staff dealing with vicarious trauma in the aftermath of helping survivors; and creating a public statement about the prevalence of human trafficking in Niagara.

Snider said agencies and survivors can inform the wider community of the existence of human trafficking farms by speaking “openly and directly,” about them.

“It’s a call to action to those in charge to acknowledge publicly the duty to warn; if there are several reports about these farms, there’s a duty to let the community know this is a public safety issue,”