Advocacy groups denounce Salvation Army’s human trafficking campaign Advocates for sex workers’ and women’s rights are demanding an end to the Salvation Army “The Truth Isn’t Sexy” campaign. On September 25, 2009, the Salvation Army is asking its supporters to participate in “group prayers” where they will place mannequins in tattered white dresses stained with fake blood outside strip clubs and massage
parlours.
In 2008, the Salvation Army launched the campaign with a series of shocking public advertisements depicting women in situations of danger and violence. The upcoming “weekend of prayer” will take place in cities around the world and will involve actions targeting sex workers and their workplaces. In May of this year, the Salvation Army forced to apologize for a similar campaign in Australia.
“Through an aggressive misinformation campaign, the Salvation Army is trying to create hysteria regarding human trafficking in Canada,” says Katrina Pacey, Pivot lawyer and coordinator of the sex work human rights campaign. “Instead of creating effectiveevidence-based strategies to protect sex workers rights, the campaign will have the effect of further marginalizing the people they claim to be trying to help.”
Pivot Legal Society, FIRST and other prominent sex workers’ and women’s advocacy groups have joined together to speak out against the Salvation Army and their campaign. Other coalition members include the BC Coalition of Experiential Communities, the Sex Industry Workers Safety Action Group, PACE, and the Sex Professionals of Canada. “It is completely unacceptable that the Salvation Army excluded sex workers from the
development of this campaign,” says Tamara O’Doherty of FIRST. “As a result, the campaign is harming the overwhelming majority of sex workers who do not identify as trafficked persons and does nothing to further the safety and rights of the approximately 600 women and children who we believe may be trafficked into Canada each year.”
For further information, please follow the following links to statements and reports on the
reality of human trafficking in Canada:
Letter from FIRST to Salvation Army
Fact sheet about trafficking in Canada (FIRST)
Human Trafficking, Sex Work Safety and the 2010 Games: Assessments and
Recommendations (Front Line Consulting)
Trafficking in Persons and the 2010 Olympics (Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women).
Salvation Army campaign website