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From the Slums of Bolivia to Syrian Refugee Camps and Remote

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From the Slums of Bolivia to Syrian Refugee Camps and Remote THE BIG ISSUE women and children forced into sex slavery. In seedy bedrooms he’s heard and clandestinely recorded their heart-wrenching stories, returning later with local authorities to rescue them and arrest those in charge. “When you go into a brothel you’re thinking about your own safety and the safety of your team. If the recording equipment is disclosed it could be very dangerous,” says Daniel. “You’re watching your exits, making sure there’s a way out, Angels monitoring security. You’re trying to work out who’s running the brothel, how it operates, taking cues from other customers on how to act, and trying to identify the victims.” Valued at around US$32 billion, human trafficking is the second-largest illegal global provided with briefings, debriefings and clinical industry, behind drugs. Not all trafficked people psychologists – and spouses are encouraged to be of mercy are sold into sex, but the vast majority are, with a part of the process. Daniel believes having these From the slums of Bolivia to Syrian the highest proportion of those being women and supports in place is essential when faced with the children. The UN estimates between 700,000 and darkest elements of humanity. refugee camps and remote Pacific eye 2,000,000 people are trafficked every year. The Nvader carries its work out in three ways. clinics, New Zealanders are making a victims are often women from already vulnerable First it gathers the evidence, with investigators communities, lured by the promise of work in posing as paying customers. Then that evidence is difference.Lynda Brendish talks to factories or hotels. When they arrive in their new translated into the local language and presented 12 gutsy Kiwis to find out more home, they’re beaten, raped, kept captive, and to police in the proper format. Daniel says they their bodies sold to work off ‘debt’. “The tools of approach the police in a culturally sensitive Photography Jessie Casson sex traffickers are deceit and coercion, lies and way, offering their support and staying out of force,” says Daniel. the limelight. The laws are in place, but possibly Daniel established Nvader after years working not always the manpower or the political will to here’s an ingrained sense of fairness in the in similar organisations based in the USA, where enforce them. Finally, the rescued women and fabric of Kiwi society – from the ongoing he moved after a long career with the New children are placed with secure aftercare facilities popularity of the telly show Fair Go, to Zealand Police. They were years that took their toll dedicated to supporting and empowering them fair play on the sports field and the way we’ve on him – and his marriage. so they don’t have to return to sex work. embraced Fairtrade. When you read the stories “It’s not the work itself, it’s the failure … When New Zealanders come from the least corrupt of Kiwis pitching in to create better lives and you’ve got to get back on a plane knowing a country in the world and are friendly, culturally environments around the world, you get a sense child you met is still getting raped,” he says. sensitive travellers – traits, says Daniel, that make Tof this innate barometer for justice, along with our “You’re not just fighting sex trafficking anymore. Kiwis ideally suited to this specialist line of work. typical can-do attitude and modest pragmatism. You’re talking about Maria, who is 12 years old In just the last few weeks, Daniel’s team located and you’ve held her hand while she’s cried, and and rescued a group of girls in Laos, trafficked Daniel Walker expressed fear and terror.” from neighbouring Cambodia, some as young Nvader, Global Daniel says he developed a “dangerous as 10 and 11 years old. “It’s amazing to be able Imagine the inside of a brothel; it could be a mindset”, becoming consumed with success. to say, as a team, because we showed up this high-class joint in the midst of Bangkok’s urban “Failure wasn’t an option.” 11-year-old girl is now free, and living her life and sprawl, a grimy shack in an Indian slum, or on the He returned to New Zealand divorced, feeling her childhood like every child should. And that outskirts of a bustling East African capital. The broken and convinced he would never again work local community is able to see, through media and location is incidental. What matters is the high- in the anti-trafficking world. It was only after a the public justice system, these tech recording equipment you’re concealing under police psychologist encouraged him to write his people with real names and real your clothes and the evidence you’re gathering of experiences down that he began to realise how crimes are being publicly held illegal sex trafficking. Evidence that can later be much he still had to contribute. The writings accountable and going to jail.” used to rescue the trafficked women and children formed the basis for Daniel’s challenging book being forced to work there, and to ensure the God in a Brothel. For more information, visit pimps are prosecuted. “I realised how much I had learned doing this www.nvader.org. You can Daniel Walker, founder of Kiwi anti-sex work and recognised the mistakes that had been also make a tax-deductible trafficking organisation Nvader, doesn’t need to made, both personally and professionally, and donation or order God in a imagine the scenario; he’s lived it many times over. how they could be improved,” he says. Brothel through Nvader’s His job on anti-trafficking squads has seen him go Daniel has built these lessons into Nvader’s partner, TEAR Fund: undercover into brothels all over the world, meeting structure, and today his investigators are www.tearfund.org.nz good.net.nz 40 good.net.nz 41 THE BIG ISSUE Chatu Yapa Médecins Sans Frontières, Iraq “I’ve always had a strong social instinct and a strong desire to do more, to live a life less ordinary,” says Chatu Yapa. And now, as medical team leader for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) at the Domiz camp in Kurdish Iraq, where thousands of Syrian refugees are fleeing, she’s doing just that. Chatu, who was born in Sri Lanka and lived in Samoa before New Zealand, remembers seeing news reports about the Rwandan crisis when she was a child. “That memory really stuck with me and being a doctor was the most health needs are basic – coughs, ustralia A obvious choice to think about helping colds, diarrhoea and the like. RES people,” she says. “It’s not high acuity emergency È The opportunity to shoulder the intervention, but people need it,” NTI Angel McNamara O R responsibility of a clinic in South says Chatu. Spinning Top, Thailand F Sudan, where Chatu’s first volunteer Chatu’s proud to be a Kiwi out A display in The Body Shop set Angel ANS stint sent her, followed by a refugee in the field and she’s grateful for S McNamara on the path to teaching camp in Iraq, has been been both the grounding her Kiwi upbringing Burmese refugee children with Spinning challenging and rewarding. “To find and education has given her. DECINS Top, a Wellington-based organisation that yourself in these positions and push “New Zealand is doing really well provides shelter, nutrition, and therapeutic /MÉ yourself to these limits, you discover in the way we incorporate socio- apa arts programmes to children in extreme Y so much about yourself and what economic factors and cultural poverty. Angel hails from Canada but has you’re capable of,” she says. “And you factors into the way we deliver hatu adopted New Zealand as her home. With C can really see the impact of the work health. It’s cool to have that her background in film and television she you do … It’s quite empowering for a background.” thought she could help out teaching kids young doctor like me.” GRAPHY stop-motion animation. “I always wanted O The clinic in Dohuk sees about T Learn more or donate to Médecins to make some sort of difference and this O 250-350 patients a day. Most of the Sans Frontières at www.msf.org.au PH seemed like a life-changing opportunity,” Angel says. So she travelled to Mae Sot, in Thailand, near the border with Burma to teach children – often orphans or victims of trafficking. “It’s difficult to see people suffer and see such poverty, but it was so Philippa Robinson rewarding seeing my students laugh and Library advisor, Bougainville have such a great time.” Aucklander Philippa Robinson arrived in Bougainville Back in New Zealand, Angel is editing a more than a decade after the end of the conflict that documentary of her time in Mae Sot, with tore it apart, and three days before the opening of the a percentage of proceeds to be donated to island’s first post-conflict library. She has plunged right Spinning Top’s work. in to the challenges of running the library, with school and community visits filling her days. She’s also planning You can donate to Spinning Top at literacy and reading workshops and an ambitious project www.spinningtop.org – and look out to digitally archive oral histories of the island. The library for the documentary in November! has been embraced with enthusiasm by a community hampered by a lack of basic infrastructure. “It’s really rewarding seeing people come through the door, their carter faces lighting up when they see books on the shelves, or being engrossed in their reading,” Philippa says.
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