Julia Ormond, President of Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET) and UN Goodwill Ambassador in Human Trafficking addressed the Global Philanthropy Forum. Julia Ormond reveals statistics in human trafficking and slavery and why it often goes unreported. Ormond recalls stories from child victims from around the world to shed light on the growing problem.
Bio
Julia Ormond
Julia Ormond has a track record of advocacy on human rights issues in her individual capacity, as the Founding Chair of FilmAid International and the President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET). FilmAid, an independent nonprofit launched at the height of the Kosovo refugee crisis, uses the power of film to promote health, strengthen communities and enrich the lives of the world's vulnerable and uprooted. ASSET works with corporations, NGOs, government officials and individuals to create the systemic change needed to eradicate slavery at the source.
In September, 2003, Julia testified before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus about the plight of refugees. ASSET has since helped, as a member of the U.S. Action Group to End Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery, to launch the United States Congressional Caucus to Abolish Slavery and organized a UN Security Council Arria on the intersect between terrorism, organized crime and trafficking in persons and its threat to international security. Ms. Ormond has worked closely with Vital Voices Global Partnership, a prominent NGO actively engaged in anti-human trafficking initiatives. In September, 2005, she worked on anti-human trafficking advocacy initiatives with Vital Voices and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Moscow.
Ms. Ormond is well known for her film roles in the motion pictures Legends of the Fall, Sabrina, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, First Knight and The Barber of Siberia. She is also the Executive Producer of the 1996 Emmy award-winning documentary Calling of the Ghosts, an intimate story of survival of two women in Bosnia caught in a war where rape was as much an everyday weapon as bullets and bombs.
In December, 2005, she became the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Goodwill Ambassador against Trafficking and Slavery, and has since visited Ghana, Cambodia, Thailand and India. In June, 2006, she gave Congressional testimony on trafficking and slavery before the House Sub Committee on Human Rights.
Condition in which one human being is owned by another. Slavery has existed on nearly every continent, including Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and throughout most of recorded history. The ancient Greeks and Romans accepted the institution of slavery, as did the Mayas, Incas, Aztecs, and Chinese. Until European involvement in the trade, however, slavery was a private and domestic institution. Beginning in the 16th century, a more public and “racially” based type of slavery was established when Europeans began importing slaves from Africa to the New World (seeslave trade). An estimated 11 million people were taken from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade. By the mid-19th century the slave population in the U.S. had risen to more than four million, although slave imports had been banned from 1809. Most of the Africans sent to the United States worked on cotton or rice plantations in the South, their status governed by slave codes. Almost 40% of captives transported from Africa to the Americas were taken to Brazil, where harsh conditions required the constant replenishing of slaves. Following the rise of abolitionism, Britain outlawed slavery in its colonies in 1833, and France did the same in 1848. During the American Civil War, slavery was abolished in the Confederacy by the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), which was decreed by Pres. Abraham Lincoln. Brazil was the last to abolish slavery, doing so in 1888. Official policy notwithstanding, slavery continues to exist in many parts of the world. Many contemporary slaves are women and children forced into prostitution or working at hard labour or in sweatshops. Debt bondage is common, affecting millions of people, and slaves are often traded for material goods. See alsoDred Scott decision; Fugitive Slave Acts; serfdom; Underground Railroad.
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