The International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression, according to the official IJM website, ijm.org. The Alabama chapter of IJM will host the “Slavery Still Exists” forum Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Ferguson Forum Room to bring light to the aforementioned issues.
“We wanted to dedicate a night to just raise awareness of the issue of modern day slavery,” said Tori Luna, president of AIJM. “I feel like if more people knew the facts and statistics about forced labor and human trafficking, they would be more willing to get involved and do something.”
The forum will consist of a speaker followed by discussion, and will end with the showing of the documentary, “End of Slavery.” AIJM will be hosting the forum with Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority.
“We thought [AIJM] would be the perfect organization to co-host with since a big part their mission is bringing light to human trafficking,” said Michelle Lee, community service and morals and ethics chair for Sigma Lambda Gamma. “We also wanted to make sure that we had our facts straight, so it just made sense to us that we ask AIJM to host the forum with us.”
The speaker for Wednesday’s forum will be Nancy Payne, AIJM faculty advisor and professor in the School of Social Work. Payne has been involved in IJM for more than 20 years. Lee said Payne’s knowledge and personal experiences will make for an engaging lecture.
“When a group of students at UA decided to charter a college chapter, I was very excited to become involved with them,” Payne said. “As a social worker, I am called to fight human oppression and injustice. The issue of slavery and human trafficking is simply not acceptable. I am called to do what I can to shed light on this issue.”
Luna said AIJM hopes to educate and enlighten people on how big an issue human oppression is around the world.
“People aren’t aware that Atlanta is the 13th highest place in the world right now for sex trafficking,” she said. “There are 27 million people enslaved in the world today. This is a number that we should not be OK with. We believe that as a group of college students we can do something about this issue.”
Payne said victims of injustice often don’t have a voice.
“College students can use their collective voices on behalf of individual victims to begin to make a difference,” she said. “In order to begin steps toward fighting against this level of slavery and oppression, we must raise the awareness of the problem. Educating students across the UA campus is a crucial step in actually making a difference in this fight against injustice. AIJM includes advocacy and education as part of our mission since knowledge is an initial step in taking action to end this injustice. We can be the voice for the voiceless victims.”
For more information on IJM, visit ijm.org. To get involved with IJM on campus email Luna at [email protected], find them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter at @AlabamaIJM.
