Long-term Justice: Business Solutions to Human Trafficking
In our series this month “Exploring BAM as Justice: Choosing Hope in the Face of Challenge” we’re taking a deep dive into the intersection of faith, business, and complex global realities. We’ll be looking at business as mission’s impact on poverty and justice issues across the globe. Our final post for the series is ‘from the archives’, revisiting this post on what it takes to bring long-term justice and transformation.
By Mats Tunehag
In the 1700’s the slave trade was widely accepted and legal. It was, in fact, a backbone of the economy of the British Empire. It was a big, organized and transnational business.
William Wilberforce and the Clapham group decided to fight this evil trade. They chose to attack the systemic issue – the legality of slave trade and slavery. To that end they organized a decades long campaign focusing on justice, aiming at a root cause. They worked politically to change unjust and ungodly laws that permitted the dehumanizing trade.
They could have chosen an easier route of awareness campaigns and a boycott of sugar from plantations in Jamaica, but they knew such initiatives in themselves would not free the slaves or bring about lasting change. The feel good factor may have been higher, but the long-term outcomes would have been meager.
Charity and Justice
Today the slave trade and slavery are illegal, but not dead. Human trafficking is modern day slavery, and it is a lucrative and evil business. Just like Wilberforce and his colleagues, we need to ask what the systemic issue is today – and we need to go beyond charitable actions to fight for justice.
We visited St. Andrew Catholic Church in Clemson, South Carolina early 2016, and their vision statement struck us:
“Charity” is the generosity that alleviates needs that are immediate. “Justice” is the process by which generosity configures our ways of providing education, delivering health care, doing business, and creating laws that lessen the need for charity. There will always be immediate needs even in the most just of worlds.
Charity is the more attractive generosity. We see immediate results for the better and we enjoy – here and now – the gratification that comes from doing good. Justice is less attractive because it usually calls for personal and communal change, and we are creatures of habit.
We often respond to needs and global issues through non-profit charity models. But the danger is that some may have more of a PR function sprinkled with feel good factors, rather than dealing with systemic issues and root causes.
Wilberforce and the Clapham group were not popular; they worked against an institution – slavery – that was broadly accepted. Today, taking a position against human trafficking is among the easiest things you can do. The world will applaud you! But how can your stand free slaves and restore human dignity?
“Justice” is the process by which generosity configures our ways of providing education, delivering health care, doing business, and creating laws that lessen the need for charity.
Root Cause to Human Trafficking
We need to identify root causes to human trafficking. One answer is unemployment. Places with high unemployment and under-employment become high-risk areas, where traffickers trick and trap vulnerable people looking for jobs. Thus we cannot talk about adequate prevention of human trafficking unless we include the need for jobs with dignity. [1]
We must also answer the question: out of trafficking and into what? Jobs with dignity provide a hope for sustainable freedom to survivors. Effective prevention and restoration require jobs. Who can create jobs with dignity? Business people.
Human trafficking is a huge and hugely profitable crime, connecting criminal organisations around the world. It is big, organised and transnational. On the other side, most of those combatting trafficking are in the non-profit sector; and the charities responding are often small, local and poorly connected. We need to develop strategies and initiatives focused on business solutions to human trafficking, and they must have the capacity to be (or become) big, organised and transnational.
In 2012, the Business as Mission Global Think Tank assigned a working group to explore business solutions to human trafficking. The group identified businesses that aim at providing solutions to human trafficking, particularly by providing jobs for prevention and restoration.
Called freedom businesses, these businesses exist to fight human trafficking. There are several types of business that fit into this category: businesses that create jobs for survivors of exploitation would be the most familiar. Other workplaces hire vulnerable people in order to prevent exploitation, or aggregate products from these first two and bring them to new markets. Because employment is an important aspect of human dignity, freedom businesses offer opportunities to people whose main qualification is the need for a job.
The Think Tank group produced a groundbreaking report: A Business Takeover: Combating the Business of the Sex Trade with Business as Mission.Excerpts from the report reinforce the crucial role of business:
Freedom businesses are uniquely positioned to strike at the economically driven foundations of the sex trade. By combining the necessary components of economic productivity and holistic ministry, the staggering numbers of people caught in the trade can be reduced through the powerful response of freedom business.
Traditionally, businesses have been relegated to participating in anti-trafficking work as the funding source for the work of nonprofits. However, business as mission (BAM) entrusts businesses with much more than simply funding nonprofit work; the business itself becomes the vehicle of change. As such, both nonprofit and for-profit strategies are integral to success in anti-trafficking work.
Business and nonprofit work can come together in anti-trafficking work to focus on job creation, increasing the employability of individuals who have been victimized by human trafficking, and in their subsequent aftercare.”
This report catalyzed the launch of the Freedom Business Alliance (FBA), which has grown into a global association that is working to end human trafficking by addressing its economic roots. You can read more about FBA in the previous blog in this series.
Movements of Societal Transformation
Fighting human trafficking through business solutions is necessary but it is not a quick fix. We are seeking a good and lasting change, a holistic transformation on a macro scale.
Throughout history there has been movements of societal transformation. We can mention the Protestant reformation, Wilberforce and the abolitionists, the suffragettes, and the civil rights movement in the US.
Justice is less attractive than charity because it usually calls for personal and communal change, and we are creatures of habit.
Looking at these movements, one can observe some common themes. The groups often started as a small minority with a shared vision and common values. They connected with one another, built a critical mass, and had a commendable tenacity.
The freedom business movement has the potential to become a movement of societal transformation. The vision is clear and the values are shared. You are, of course invited, to join the freedom movement!
Doing BAM and growing freedom businesses to bring freedom and achieve societal transformation is not instant coffee: take a few bits of BAM thinking and a desire for freedom, stir into a business and voilà: transformation. No, societal transformation takes time. We want to set a stage and serve our generation in such a way that it will be a blessing for many generations to come.
BAM and the Olive Tree
We can learn from the olive tree. Many of us think in terms of two kinds of olives: green and black. But there are a thousand or more varieties! In the BAM movement we are not just two categories: business people on the one hand, and church and mission people on the other. Instead, we are part of a greater ecosystem of investors, business professionals, prayer partners, entrepreneurs, academics, human trafficking experts, theologians, marketing and sales people, and many others.
After planting, it takes about twenty-five years before an olive tree bears edible fruit. But once it starts bearing fruit, it can produce olives for two thousand years – or more! Olive trees are intergenerational blessings. [2]
The modern BAM movement and the freedom business movement are still young; we are in some ways still within the first 25 years of the life of an olive tree. We do see some fruit, but are eagerly awaiting more.
In this stage of growth, the BAM olive tree needs care and feeding; the strategic and intentional investment of time and resources. We want to build a movement that can bring the good and lasting “fruit” of transformation – to bring justice for the long-term into the issues of injustice prevalent in our day. .
We embrace the promise that God will bless us so we can be a blessing – in and through business – in our generation and for many generations to come.
By Mats Tunehag, with input from Jennifer Roemhildt Tunehag. Adapted for this series from an original post in December 2017.
Mats Tunehag is a senior global ambassador for BAM and has worked in over half the countries of the world. He is the chairman of BAM Global and contributes to TransformationalSME.org. Visit MatsTunehag.com for BAM resources in 23 languages.
[1] Mats wrote a longer article in 2015 which elaborates on human trafficking, a root cause and business solutions: http://matstunehag.com/2015/05/17/human-trafficking-and-freedom-through-enterprise/
[2] See also Mats’ article on BAM, the olive tree and movements of societal transformation from 2013: http://matstunehag.com/2013/05/08/bam-the-olive-tree/
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash
