Brief Report on MECPATH Campaign, June 2014.
June 19, 2014
The MECPATH Team came together at the end of May to look back on all that we have achieved, and think ahead about how to best move forward to achieve our goals.
Reports from the Team reflect that it has been a busy period and progress made to date has been deeply encouraging. We have reached out to over 100 hotels across Ireland and the response from our colleagues in the hospitality sector has been fantastic. The passion that all of us share to protect children from exploitation has been a unifying and driving force in moving the campaign forward. Any movement of a child across national borders, or within Ireland, for the purposes of sexual exploitation constitutes child trafficking.
In recent months, we have collaborated with a diverse range of actors, within Ireland and internationally, to share experience and expertise and to support each other in this important work. In April, the MECPATH team met with Pat Zerega from Mercy Investment Services in the US. Pat is an expert on child trafficking, particularly as it pertains to the hospitality sector. Christine Carolan from ACRATH (Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans) also visited the MECPATH Team to learn about our work and share the experience of Australian religious working on this issue.
In London, Sr. Denise Boyle (Campaign Manager) and Ruth Kilcullen (Fellow) met with representatives of TRAC (Trafficking - Raising Awareness and Campaigning), an NGO working to eradicate trafficking, to discuss expanding the MECPATH campaign across the UK. We also met with Bishop Pat Lynch, responsible for Immigrant issues including anti-trafficking for the Catholic Bishops; Conference of England and Wales, who was very positive and interested in implementing a similar campaign. This interaction with organisations working to end child trafficking around the world is extremely important. Their deep insight and knowledge is rooted in vast experience of this issue in their own countries, which is of great value to the MECPATH campaign as we develop and grow.
Various authorities in Ireland have given their full support to the MECPATH campaign from the beginning and their input continues to be of vital importance to our work. In April, MECPATH hosted a roundtable discussion with representatives from the Department of Justice, the Child and Family Agency, the Garda National Immigration Bureau, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, and the NGOs Ruhama and APT (Act to Prevent Trafficking). The purpose of this meeting was to identify the key principles that should underpin a hotel’s approach to preventing child trafficking, and from these draw up a protocol of best practices in cases where a child on hotel premises may be at risk of being sexually exploited. This protocol has the support of the IHF and will help to raise awareness of this issue among hoteliers.
The MECPATH Campaign continues with a lot done and a lot more to do. In the coming months we look forward to expanding our awareness-raising materials, working with our partners to help hoteliers provide crucial training to their staff, and reaching out to more hotels across the country. With continued collaboration and determination we will work to create an Ireland where childhood is sacred and children are safe.
Ruth Kilcullen,
4 June 2014
