18 Days of Freedom Awareness Campaign

 

18 Days of Freedom

 

Most of us take our freedom for granted. But 3 million people across Europe have no freedom (source OSCE). Men, women and children are trafficked; they are enslaved into sexual or labor exploitation.

 

“18 Days of Freedom” is about celebrating what freedom means to all of us. From 1 to 18 October people across Europe will post their freedom photos at #18daysoffreedom.   Then on 18^th October, the European Union’s Anti-Trafficking Day, they will also remember those who have no freedom and why this is so.

 

“18 Days of Freedom” is the idea of partners of the European Freedom Network, an initiative of the European Evangelical Alliance. EFN is a coalition of 130 projects involved in anti-trafficking work in 32 nations.

 

“18 days of freedom” will be celebrated in at least 11 countries. The initiative involves EFN partners and many others, united in their concern about sexual exploitation.

 

“All who care about exploitation are invited to share what freedom means to them and then pause on 18^th October to remember the toll of human trafficking in Europe,” says Jennifer Roemhildt Tunehag, EEA Human Trafficking Associate and EFN core team member.

 

Many partners are choosing to underline the exploitation within prostitution and its links to human trafficking. They will highlight how Sweden’s law to criminalize the purchase of sex has not just halved the amount of street prostitution but also made it socially unacceptable to buy sex.

 

“Change the way we think and we change the world, “says Julia Doxat-Purser, EEA Socio-Political Representative and EFN core team member. “We want Europe to say a firm ’No’ to exploitation of human beings and to implement the policies which can stop exploitation from happening in the first place.” 

 

In Rome we ask for your prayers to empower us to reach out and to raise our voices for those entrapped by porn, prostitution, and trafficking.