Airlines urged to step up fight against human trafficking

Airlines are being urged to train more flight attendants to help prevent human trafficking, placing cabin crew on the front line of the fight against sexual exploitation and slavery. Airline leaders meeting in Mexico will be briefed by the United Nations agency responsible for tackling the largely hidden crime, which the UN says nets smugglers $150b profit a year. "We want ... airlines to join our campaigns and our initiatives in order to make human trafficking and migrant smuggling visible," said Felipe De La Torre of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) ahead of the June 4-6 meeting of the IATA. According to the International Labour Organisation, almost 21m people are in forced labour, meaning three out of every 1,000 people on the planet are enslaved at any given time. In a case that sprang to public attention in February, an Alaska Airlines flight attendant helped rescue a teenage girl from alleged trafficking onboard a domestic US flight in 2011 by leaving her a note in the toilet. Shelia Frederick said her suspicions had been aroused by the girl's dishevelled appearance compared to the smart clothes and controlling attitude of her older male companion. The pilot alerted police who arrested the man on arrival. More than 70,000 US airline staff have been trained to identify smugglers and their victims in that way under the Blue Lightning initiative, launched in 2013 with the support of JetBlue, Delta and others. Such training has since become mandatory. But Nancy Rivard, a former flight attendant hailed as a pioneer of such training, said the US federal programme is poorly funded and that the majority of foreign airlines are barely starting to focus on the problem. "This exists in every country in the world. There is room for improvement but at least we are beginning to make changes," Rivard, founder of Airline Ambassadors International, said. Current online training does not go far enough, she added.<br/>