Why the Blue Heart Campaign matters – Rebecca Buttigieg

When travelling, your ultimate goal is to get to your destination safely. Maybe you have a habit of stopping at a bookshop to get a newspaper for your journey or, perhaps, you prefer to buy snacks to prepare for your long flight.
Amid the rush, you may spot a poster, showing you an example of what could look like an ordinary person but, in reality, it could very well be a masked example of human trafficking. Such a poster will oblige you to make a call to the authorities and report it.
The reality is that human trafficking is a much more gurning form of violence than we may envisage, for it exploits women, men and children for different purposes and, ultimately, strips away any form of control a victim may have. 
It will soon be 19 years since Malta ratified the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, also known as the Palermo Protocol. We have come a long way in combatting human trafficking and supporting victims of such a heinous crime, but this does not mean that our work is over.

The Blue Heart Campaign, an annual campaign originally initiated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, aims at raising...