Each week the Freedom Fund curates the most insightful and timely news stories about modern slavery. Check out what we’re reading among this week’s top slavery articles.

Flight Attendants Fight Human Trafficking With Eyes in the Sky
The New York Times, 7 February 2017
The nonprofit organization, Airline Ambassadors International, trains workers at airlines and airports how to spot, and report, cases of human trafficking. Alaskan airlines flight attendant Shelia Fredrick made headlines when she rescued a teenage human trafficking victim on a flight from Seattle to San Francisco.

Slavery survivor: Escaping a trafficker shouldn’t be left to chance
The CNN Freedom Project, 7 February 2017
Ronny Marty is a member the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking and a survivor of labour trafficking. “Freedom should not rely on chance,” he writes. “Never before has a new president been inaugurated with such a concrete, survivor-informed plan available to help put an end to modern slavery in the United States.”

Child marriages on the rise amid Yemeni conflict
The National, 6 February 2017
Child marriages in Yemen, which were previously in decline, are on the rise again as families struggle to cope with the hardships of war, according to a survey by the United Nations. Nearly 32% of girls in Yemen were married before the age of 18, including 9% who were wed before they were 15. Of these, 8% had given birth before they turned 19.

Human Trafficking in U.S. Increased in 2016, Organization Reports
NBC News, 5 February 2017
The National Human Trafficking Hotline found that 7,500 cases of human trafficking were reported in 2016 — up from 5,526 in the previous year. The hotline, which is run by the nonprofit organization Polaris, maintains a resource center for victims of trafficking and aggregates statistics based on incoming reports and phone calls.

How high street clothes were made by children in Myanmar for 13p an hour
The Guardian, 5 February 2017
Children as young as 14 have been employed to make clothes for some of the most popular names on the UK high street, according to a new report. Several major brands have switched their production to low-cost factories in Myanmar. Workers told investigators that they were paid as little as 13p an hour producing clothes for UK retailers – half the full legal minimum wage.

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