Seattle World Cup efforts deal with intercourse, human trafficking considerations amid coming journey inflow

SEATTLE, — Seattle’s World Cup Organizing Committee is taking up a unique kind of problem because the occasion approaches: intercourse and human trafficking.

Seattle is anticipated to attract round 750,000 guests for the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches and related occasions. However, amongst all of the celebrations and busy preparation, there’s an underlying worry that trafficking victims could also be amongst these numbers.

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“I do think that there is a lot of awareness around large events that human trafficking increases when there are large events. It’s also something that comes up being a port city, the way that we are being a point of entry from a lot of different parts of the world, and it’s something when we talk even to indigenous organizations and tribes,” stated Leo Flor, who’s the committee’s Chief Legacy Officer.

Flor and colleagues are actually sponsoring free workshops to assist employers forestall human trafficking earlier than, throughout, and after the video games.

“Our legal statute defines human trafficking is any act of labor that’s compelled through force, fraud, or coercion, and any act of commercial sex compelled through force, fraud, or coercion,” stated Kirsten Foot, the CEO and Executive Director of BEST, which stands for Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking.

She’s serving to to coordinate the workshops that present suggestions and instruments for figuring out whether or not somebody is in disaster and methods to assist alert the right authorities.

“We want hotel workers, restaurant workers, temporary security guards, to be able to see the signs of human trafficking, recognize them as they’re happening,” she stated.

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Foot makes the argument that human trafficking is tied to organized retail theft. The connection was made by Senator Chuck Grassley (R) , Iowa, in congressional hearings earlier this 12 months.

The Port of Seattle has already created a program to handle the problem, and says a QR code system that was posted on the waterfront and within the airport led to 1082 scans in 14 completely different languages in 2024.

“It’s not just with big events, but it certainly gets worse when sort of large numbers of people come together for short-term fun, and that can take a wrong and bad turn in the form of human trafficking and sex trafficking, that’s really what we’re trying to get ahead of,” stated Flor.