Aviation, tourism can do more to stop human trafficking

Flight attend­ant Donna Hub­bard was deeply con­cerned when a couple car­ried a boy who was sweat­ing, leth­ar­gic and appeared to be in pain onto her flight from Hon­dur­as to Miami in Octo­ber last year.

After take-off, Hub­bard and her crew spoke to the man and woman sep­ar­ately, who gave dif­fer­ent names and ages for the boy. Hub­bard told the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion she was sus­pi­cious that he was being traf­ficked, kid­napped or even being used as a drug mule.

The pilot aler­ted author­it­ies in Miami who met the boy and his com­pan­ions on arrival. While unable to reveal details, a cus­toms offi­cial later told Hub­bard that she had made the “right call” and the boy had been safely inter­cep­ted by officials.

Hub­bard’s actions are the kind of inter­ven­tion the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recom­men­ded last week when it urged air­line bosses at an inter­na­tion­al air­line sum­mit to train flight crews to help pre­vent human trafficking.

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, UNODC policy dir­ect­or, told the Inter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port Asso­ci­ation (IATA) meet­ing: “It is not rock­et sci­ence but most flight attend­ants spend one hour to eight hours with passengers.

“They can see the signs. It’s an invis­ible crime but in plain sight, you can see it if you know what to look at.”

The skies have long been on the front­lines of the fight against human traf­fick­ing as crim­in­al gangs trans­port thou­sands of chil­dren and vul­ner­able people by air each year.

These vic­tims are among almost 46 mil­lion people glob­ally liv­ing as slaves, traf­ficked into exploit­a­tion, sold for sex or trapped in debt bond­age, accord­ing to the 2016 Glob­al Slavery Index.

While some train­ing of air­line staff to spot and report poten­tial traf­fick­ing is man­dat­ory in the United States, it is not wide­spread across the industry.

Cam­paign­ers say this must change. Nancy Rivard, founder of Air­line Ambas­sad­ors Inter­na­tion­al, a char­ity that trains glob­al air­line staff on traf­fick­ing, said the situ­ation is improv­ing slowly but much more needs to be done.

More than 70,000 U.S. air­line staff have been trained to spot smug­glers and their vic­tims under the Blue Light­ning ini­ti­at­ive, launched in 2013 with the sup­port of Jet­Blue, Delta Air Lines and others.

But Rivard said most air­lines are “doing the very min­im­um against traf­fick­ing” on board their flights.

Flight attend­ant Hub­bard, who works with Rivard’s char­ity, said some air­lines had taken action but oth­ers were “afraid of the liab­il­ity of acknow­ledging that (traf­fick­ing) hap­pens on our air­planes even though they know it exists”.

Anti-traf­fick­ing group ECPAT-USA said that air­lines’ work on the issue has lagged behind oth­er travel and tour­ism sectors.

“While we have seen large num­bers of hotels train staff and their par­ent com­pan­ies adopt policies, we see very little move­ment with air­lines,” Michelle Guel­bart of ECPAT-USA told the Thom­son Reu­ters Foundation.

She said Delta Air Lines was the first and remains one of only two glob­al air­lines — with Mex­ico’s Volar­is — to join ‘The Code’, an industry ini­ti­at­ive to boost aware­ness and stop child sex exploitation.

“It is shock­ing that so many have con­tin­ued to lag behind but we hope this changes and their peers step up,” she said.

Air­line Ambas­sad­ors Inter­na­tion­al (AAI) mem­bers at the United Nations, includ­ing Donna Hub­bard (front row, far left) and Nancy Rivard (front row, second from left) Source: AAI

Lack of training

Rivard, a former flight attend­ant, said her organ­isa­tion trains staff to be aware of young women or chil­dren who appear to be being con­trolled, show signs of mis­treat­ment or who seem frightened, ashamed or nervous.

She said flight attend­ants reg­u­larly start con­ver­sa­tions with women trav­el­ling alone, such one 18-year-old on a 2015 flight from Chica­go, who said she was excited to see a boy­friend she had met on Face­book but who was­n’t com­ing to meet her at the airport.

When staff checked the seat reser­va­tion, Rivard said, they found it had been booked by a woman in a dif­fer­ent part of the coun­try with the a “nefar­i­ous look­ing” social media pro­file of “love me long, love me good”.

Fol­low­ing fur­ther invest­ig­a­tion, the teen­ager was res­cued by law enforce­ment offi­cials three days later, she said.

Rivard also cited a recent flight from Rome to Chica­go, when staff noted a sev­en-year-old Albani­an girl trav­el­ling with a middle-aged Amer­ic­an man — a situ­ation that seemed suspicious.

The crew informed the flight deck, said Rivard, but the pilot had received no train­ing on traf­fick­ing so refused to report anything.

Rivard said attend­ants should not try to res­cue poten­tial vic­tims them­selves and should inform appro­pri­ate author­it­ies. If they don’t, she said, “they’re as guilty as the traffickers”.

Air­line Ambas­sad­ors Inter­na­tion­al col­lab­or­ates with the US’ Home­land Secur­ity and the State Depart­ment to train air­line and travel industry per­son­nel with Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons approved cur­ricula at major air­line hubs.

Growing momentum?

Hub­bard said edu­ca­tion, increas­ing pub­lic aware­ness and great­er efforts by some air­lines means the fight against traf­fick­ing in the air is gradu­ally gain­ing momentum.

Dubai-based Emir­ates, the world’s largest longhaul car­ri­er, told the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion it was work­ing on a traf­fick­ing train­ing pro­gramme for all cab­in crew.

Low-cost Brit­ish air­line Easyjet said in March it would intro­duce enhanced train­ing on traf­fick­ing for crew and ground staff over the next year.

Delta said it had trained over 54,000 employ­ees to spot signs of traf­fick­ing and poin­ted to its part­ner­ship with anti-traf­fick­ing group Polar­is, who map all calls to the Nation­al Human Traf­fick­ing Hot­line in the United States.

Amer­ic­an Air­lines said it was com­mit­ted to the fight against traf­fick­ing, used train­ing offered by Blue Light­ning and has an air mile dona­tion pro­gramme to Air­line Ambas­sad­ors International.

US air­line South­w­est said it gives train­ing on traf­fick­ing to new hires and the inform­a­tion is widely avail­able to exist­ing employees.

Ryanair said all of its crew under­go rig­or­ous train­ing in full com­pli­ance with European Uni­on guidelines.

Of 13 major inter­na­tion­al air­lines con­tac­ted by the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, sev­en did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Source: Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reuters.

Accord­ing to the Air­line Ambas­sad­ors Inter­na­tion­al web­site, “air­ports and sup­port­ing travel hotels are major hubs of entry and exit for per­pet­rat­ors and vic­tims [of human traf­fick­ing]. Train­ing is needed for air­port and travel industry per­son­nel includ­ing air­port employ­ees, hotel employ­ees, tour­ism com­pan­ies, ground trans­port­a­tion and law enforce­ment. [The US State Depart­ment (DOS)] sup­ports such train­ing, but cur­rently does not fund it.

“Air­line Ambas­sad­ors Inter­na­tion­al col­lab­or­ates with Home­land Secur­ity and DOS to train air­line and travel industry per­son­nel with [Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (TIP)] approved cur­ricula at major air­line hubs.”