The Celebritization of Human Trafficking
- Document number
- 2988
- Date
- 2013
- Title
- The Celebritization of Human Trafficking
- Author/publisher
- Dina Francesca Haynes
- Availability
- View/save PDF version of this document
- Document type(s)
- Media/News, Research/Study/Analysis,
- Keywords
- human trafficking, anti-trafficking, human rights, celebrity activism, human rights activism, human trafficking activism
- Summary
- Abstract:
Celebrities now regularly engage with human trafficking policy and practice. A “sexy” topic, human trafficking is not only susceptible to alluring, fetishistic and voyeuristic narratives, but plays into the celebrity-as-rescuer-of-the-victim ideal that receives excessive attention from media, policymakers and the public. While some celebrities may become knowledgeable enough to give responsible advice to law and policy makers, others engaging in anti-trafficking activism are neither knowledgeable enough nor using good judgment when interacting with those who make the laws and create anti-trafficking programs. But the responsibility must lie primarily with those same law and policy makers who are so slavishly devoted to using celebrity witnesses in order to satisfy their own desire to interact with celebrities. The extent to which law and policy makers are abdicating their duties to constituents and donors by allowing celebrity activists to provide them with legal and policy advice is emblematic of the larger and more general problems with funding, narratives and the shallow level of discourse in current anti-trafficking initiatives.