This week is July 4, a much-celebrated Independence Day holiday in the United States, often associated with freedom. Freedom is a word used in various contexts. Two hundred and fifty years ago in 1776, the United States declared its freedom from England. The word is also seen in relation to human trafficking, where current estimates show traffickers hold 49.6 million people in modern slavery worldwide, including 12 million children (ILO and United Nations, 2024).
As survivors begin a new life of freedom, they need jobs, which is where IBEC comes in as we partner with freedom businesses connected with the Freedom Business Alliance. Here is how one survivor expressed her freedom: “I used to feel like I was closed in a cage. If someone asked me what I do, I did not know what to say. Now I feel free! I feel that I am somebody. I have an identity.”
Mats and Jennifer Tunehag have been very involved with the freedom business movement for many years, and in the booklet Know Your BAM A-Z1 Mats chose “Freedom” to represent the letter “F.”
F – Freedom
Winston Churchill said: “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
Today, tens of millions of people around the world are held as slaves, they are victims of human trafficking. A root cause is unemployment. About 80 percent of those who are rescued from trafficking are re-trafficked unless they find a job with dignity at the other end. Thus, jobs with dignity and transformational businesses are essential for true freedom. Freedom businesses exist to fight human trafficking, providing jobs for prevention and restoration.
There is no quick fix to human trafficking. There is no ‘jump to freedom’; we have a long journey ahead. As Nelson Mandela said: “There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere.” This is true for millions of slaves around the world, and also for the freedom business movement.
1 https://matstunehag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/BAM-Booklet-27-April-2023.pdf
Larry W. Sharp, BAM Support Specialist, IBEC Ventures
Larry.Sharp@ibecventures.com