Wales to host inter-parliamentary meeting on human trafficking

The National Assembly for Wales is to host a committee meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly (BIPA) on 25 June.

The Conference will mark the first stage of an inquiry into human trafficking in the UK and Ireland.

Members of the committee will hear evidence from Bob Tooby, the Welsh Government’s Anti-Human Trafficking coordinator, and Mwenya Chimba from the Black Association of Women Step Out (BAWSO).

The committee will also be addressed by Joyce Watson AM, chair of the All-Party Working Group on Human Trafficking in Wales.

“BIPA is a very important organisations which allows legislatures from all over the UK to come together to look at how we can tackle, issues of mutual interests,” said the National Assembly for Wales’s Presiding Officer, Rosemary Butler AM.

“Human trafficking is effectively the modern day equivalent of slavery which sees many young children and women in particular, sold into lives of abuse.

“It is right that all of us in the UK and Ireland work together in order to try and end this horrific practice.

“And by working together and creating more joined-up approaches can only help. It starts here in Wales with this conference and we are happy to facilitate the beginnings of what will hopefully be a strategy that can free these young people from a life of slavery.”

The British Irish Parliamentary Assembly brings together representatives from the National Assembly, Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, Westminster Parliament, Irish Parliament, and the parliaments form the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.