Efficacy of “advocacy tourism” debatable

Fight trafficking on the beaches — “advocacy tourism” is here

Bored of the beach? Done with mini breaks?

Time to take an “advocacy jour­ney” and spend a bliss­ful few days in the Carib­bean fight­ing human trafficking.

In the latest offer­ing from the tour­ism industry, trips with a mis­sion are now on offer to trav­el­lers who want more from a hol­i­day than sea, sun and shopping.

This sum­mer, hol­i­day makers can twin a vis­it to the colo­ni­al Colom­bi­an city of Cart­agena with an edu­ca­tion­al pro­gramme aimed at rais­ing aware­ness about the mod­ern slave trade.

“I have been asked wheth­er the tour, giv­en its theme, was ‘depress­ing’,” wrote Kar­en Weiss, who took a sim­il­ar trip to Thai­l­and, on the tour organ­iser Ecpat-USA’s website.

“I assure you that it was not,” she wrote. “It com­bines the excite­ment of vis­it­ing a fas­cin­at­ing coun­try with a rare oppor­tun­ity to broaden your under­stand­ing of the prob­lem of human trafficking.”

Nearly 46 mil­lion people glob­ally are liv­ing as slaves, traf­ficked into tour­ism, min­ing and farm­ing, or sold for sex, trapped in debt bond­age or born into ser­vitude, accord­ing to the 2016 Glob­al Slavery Index by rights group Walk Free Foundation.

While pub­lic aware­ness has grown in recent years with new legis­la­tion, cam­paign­ing by NGOs and crack­downs in the private sec­tor, cam­paign­ers say tour­ism can be a major force for change.

Create an advocate

One fifth of July’s Cart­agena trip — organ­ised by the anti-traf­fick­ing group Ecpat-USA and travel com­pany Altruv­is­tas — will be spent vis­it­ing typ­ic­al tour­ist spots.

For the rest of the trip, the group will meet NGOs, gov­ern­ment rep­res­ent­at­ives and learn about child trafficking.

“Our jour­ney is made to cre­ate an advoc­ate, so when they come home they’re very act­ive on the issue, and inspire them to be involved,” Michelle Guel­bart of Ecpat-USA told the Thom­son Reu­ters Foundation.

All hotels used sign up to ‘The Code’, an industry ini­ti­at­ive to boost aware­ness and stop child sex exploitation.

Guel­bart said this provides a double bene­fit, edu­cat­ing trav­el­lers and pro­mot­ing respons­ible businesses.

From an indi­vidu­al trip fee of US$2,050, Ecpat-USA gets a $500 dir­ect pay­ment. Guel­bart said people who take the trips remain engaged and this is more valu­able than a one-off donation.

Ecpat-USA and Altruv­is­tas have run two sim­il­ar anti-traf­fick­ing advocacy trips to Thai­l­and, home to a vibrant sex mar­ket fed in large part by human trafficking.

Altruv­is­tas CEO Malia Ever­ette has worked in both travel and traf­fick­ing issues for about 15 years and says advocacy is a new form of tourism.

Her sus­tain­able travel com­pany runs about 80 trips annu­ally, of which a hand­ful focus on traf­fick­ing, with very dif­fer­ent par­ti­cipants. She has taken school stu­dents to Ghana to learn first hand about slavery and accom­pan­ied traf­fick­ing sur­viv­ors to Peru to meet anti-slavery groups that help people like them.

Pre­vi­ous trends for eth­ic­al travel have included volun­teer­ing, eco-tour­ism and travel that bene­fits loc­al people.

Mark Wat­son of the Eth­ic­al Tour­ism group said advocacy tour­ism can help in rais­ing aware­ness of the issues but said the impact of people try­ing to help out loc­ally was debatable.

“In most cases there’s not much you can do. There’s pro­fes­sion­al people out there doing the prop­er stuff, what they need is resources and money, what they don’t really need is tour­ists turn­ing up and get­ting in the way.”

Wat­son said the best way to help is to take eth­ic­al hol­i­days and donate money to organ­isa­tions on the ground rather than try­ing to do more while travelling.

Ever­ette said the explo­sion of eco­tour­ism in the 1970s and 1980s helped change mass travel for the bet­ter but there was little emphas­is on the people dir­ectly affected by tourism.

“As we saw tour­ism boom­ing, we also saw the com­modi­fic­a­tion of people in sex tour­ism, sex traf­fick­ing, and cul­tures just being bought rather than respec­ted,” she said.

Voluntourism

Cam­paign­ers have long raised con­cerns about the impact of tour­ism, ques­tion­ing the treat­ment of vul­ner­able people when trav­el­lers engage in so-called poverty tour­ism, and the real value of volun­teer­ing trips — or ‘volun­tour­ism’ — for locals.

James Suth­er­land of chil­dren’s char­ity Friends Inter­na­tion­al said that ‘volun­tour­ism’ in Cam­bod­ia had encour­aged the spread of unre­gistered orphan­ages which can house traf­ficked children.

“If we can con­tin­ue to foster aware­ness that every­one can play a part by being a respons­ible tour­ist, we may begin to pro­gress in ensur­ing tour­ism is not exacer­bat­ing issues, but is actu­ally play­ing a pos­it­ive role in end­ing them,” he said.

Ecpat-USA’s Guel­bart said volun­teer­ing was alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent from the advocacy trips she runs.

“When people are volun­teer­ing, it’s more for them and not actu­ally for the people in the area,” she said. Unlike her advoc­ates, who “go home and cre­ate a pro­ject that lasts”.

Source: Report­ing by Ed Upright, Edit­ing by Lyndsay Grif­fiths; Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reuters.

Image: “Grafitti, Get­se­mani, Cart­agena Colom­bia” by Bry­an Pocius