Matt Friedman | Modern Slavery Is Getting Worse

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. ResourcesWalk 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-traffickingInterpol Human Trafficking Unit - https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Operations/Operation-ScorpionChapters00:00 The Impact of Deglobalization on Modern Slavery02:50 Statistics and Resources in the Fight Against Modern Slavery05:54 Consequences of USAID Cuts on Global Health and Safety08:38 Understanding Human Trafficking and Legal Responses11:40 Cultural Attitudes and Enforcement Challenges14:12 The Role of Vulnerability in Exploitation17:23 Identifying the Most Egregious Examples of Modern Slavery20:02 Cultural Change and the Role of Awareness23:22 Internal vs. External Approaches to Addressing Modern Slavery33:12 The Impact of Fiction on Awareness36:24 Taking Responsibility: Individual Actions Against Human Trafficking38:27 Creating Compelling Content: The Role of Film in Activism40:47 Cultural Sensitivity in Addressing Trafficking43:28 The Urgency of Addressing Human Trafficking50:08 Financial Institutions and Their Role in Combatting Trafficking57:47 The Power of Business in Addressing Human Trafficking59:52 Finding Hope: The Starfish Parable