This podcast has returned to modern slavery three times now. Lisa Kristine showed us its face through her photography. Bruce Ladebu described what it actually takes to pull children out. And Matthew Friedman, in Episode 76, gave us the architecture: thirty-five years working across Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, the UN, and eventually the Mekong Club.

That first episode opened with the story of an 11-year-old Nepalese girl in a Mumbai brothel who ran across the room, wrapped herself around Matt, and begged him to save her. He couldn't, that day. He came back with police and she was gone.

This second conversation picks up in a deglobalising world. The USAID cuts have gutted sixty years of global anti-trafficking infrastructure. The $400 million available to address modern slavery has been halved. HIV clinics, maternal health programs, girls' education initiatives are all gone. And as Matt makes clear, the line from those cuts to a new trafficking victim is not abstract. It runs through hospitals, through debt, through desperation.

This episode also goes somewhere I'm afraid I didn't communicate that well, the points of cultural judgement and critique. There's a story of a sixteen-year-old Bangladeshi girl, rescued after two weeks in a brothel, who was turned away at her own front door by a father who loved her because the shame she carried would make her siblings unmarriageable. That story sits at the centre of the hardest question in this conversation: when the cultural machinery enabling trafficking runs this deep, what can the outside world actually do about it? It's a delicate subject, I regret not treating it as such.

$238 billion modern slavery generates annually flows through the same offshore plumbing this podcast has covered with Oliver Bullough and John Christensen. Matt explains how banks are already tracking it and how the Mekong Club is working with Interpol, crypto companies, and social media platforms to find it and cut it off.

It's a pleasure to welcome Matt Friedman back to the podcast.

Resources

Walk Free Foundation's Global Slavery Index - https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/
U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report - https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/
Makon Club - Anti-Human Trafficking Organization - https://makonclub.org/
USAID Human Trafficking Programs - https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment/human-trafficking
Interpol Human Trafficking Unit - https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Operations/Operation-Scorpion

Chapters

00:00 The Impact of Deglobalization on Modern Slavery
02:50 Statistics and Resources in the Fight Against Modern Slavery
05:54 Consequences of USAID Cuts on Global Health and Safety
08:38 Understanding Human Trafficking and Legal Responses
11:40 Cultural Attitudes and Enforcement Challenges
14:12 The Role of Vulnerability in Exploitation
17:23 Identifying the Most Egregious Examples of Modern Slavery
20:02 Cultural Change and the Role of Awareness
23:22 Internal vs. External Approaches to Addressing Modern Slavery
33:12 The Impact of Fiction on Awareness
36:24 Taking Responsibility: Individual Actions Against Human Trafficking
38:27 Creating Compelling Content: The Role of Film in Activism
40:47 Cultural Sensitivity in Addressing Trafficking
43:28 The Urgency of Addressing Human Trafficking
50:08 Financial Institutions and Their Role in Combatting Trafficking
57:47 The Power of Business in Addressing Human Trafficking
59:52 Finding Hope: The Starfish Parable