Welcome to your place around the virtual table at the CCARHT 2021 Summer Symposium – here in Cambridge we are getting ready for an intense three days where we shall be exploring with participants from across the world, the challenges posed by focussing on the various vulnerabilities of ‘the Body Trafficked’.

During the course of these challenging three days we shall be listening to voices of survivors, researchers, theoreticians, policy makers, psychologists, advocates for change and NGO front line responders, anxious to thread together the disparate themes unleashed by this explicit focus on the body within trafficking.

On Day One we shall start to unravel the elements of trafficking abuse woven across the complexities of international adoption, as well as in country adoption. Concerns have been raised for some years now in the way in which adoption has been routinised through children’s institutions. Where due to cultural stigmatisation, the constraints of poverty, and the impacts of civil and international warfare, babies have lost the protection of their parents and been surrendered to the care of the state or other agencies offering ‘protection’, there has opened up opportunities for egregious ‘malpractices’. Countries currently in the frame for this year’s CCARHT forensic exploration, include New Zealand, the USA, Ireland, Greece, Romania, the Philippines and China. Remedy, redress and re-evaluation for better practice will be in the frame.

With those actively engaged in transforming International and National instruments addressing malpractice and faulty systems of response, we shall also explore the current state of post-covid vulnerability for our world’s ‘orphaned’ and ‘unaccompanied’ children and look at ways of building a safer and more counter trafficking resilient future for this coming generation.

Of particular interest to –

• Child Protection Specialists
• Fostering and those delivering Institutionalised care
• Child Psychologists and Psychologists of Complex Trauma recovery
• Researchers in Colonisation of the mind and body
• Social control of sexuality and sex
• International development agencies and INGOs
• Counter trafficking specialists
• Lawyers specialising in Children’s Rights and historic redress
• Legal Guardians, Researchers, Policy advisers

Convenors: Esohe Aghatise, Dr Carrie Pemberton Ford, Arun Dohle

On Day Two we will address the unpalatable and heinous crimes which surround the harvesting of organs, body parts and body products. The deployment of deception, constraint, force, abuse of power, or the giving or receiving of payments of persons to achieve the consent of a person who has control over another person – for the exploitation of their body, all constitute the egregious abuse of Organ Trafficking.

• When does a pleasant holiday in Gambia entailing a significant surgical intervention requiring some form of transplant, morph into the uninformed purchase of trafficked organs?
• How do excited parents protect themselves and surrogate mothers from ‘supply line abuse’ in the delivery of their longed-for baby?
• What is our current understanding of the supply line of body parts in Southern Africa ?

Countries under the microscope will include Mozambique, RSA, DR Congo, Benin, Nigeria, Libya, Italy, India, Bangladesh, East Asia, Norway, the Gambia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Convenors: Esohe Aghatise, Dr Saradamoyee Chatterjee, Dr Bonny Ling

On Day Three our attention shifts to sexually ‘invaded’ bodies, principally, but not exclusively, to female bodies. We explore the ways in which bodies have their ‘value’ extracted through penetration, image capture, sexualised violence, and its traumatic payload. We shall consider together the impact of Covid 19, and the shifts in trafficking ‘value extraction’ through the deployment of web-based technologies, reportedly on steroids during the pandemic.

We shall investigate the mainstreamed exploitation of young women, boys, and transgendered people through recruitment into various aspects of the unregulated and regulated ‘sex industry’. We shall explore the efficacy of various forms of policy in generating safer and more respectful environments for sexual exchange in our late modern economies. Countries in the frame include Nigeria, Romania, Albania, Nepal, the Philippines, Mexico, Cyprus, Indonesia, USA, Sweden, Ireland, the UK. Demand, supply, value chains, and collateral damage in devastated lives and social economies will be in the frame in this high-octane day, with a significant ethical, gender based violence and social protection pay-load.

• Psychologists
• Policy makers
• Addressing Gender Based Violence activists
• Policy Makers
• International and National NGOs
• Women’s Rights
• Child Protection agencies
• Academics, Gender Studies, Sociology, Psychology, Political Economists

Convenors: Mary Honeyball, Dr Halleh Seddighzadeh, Prof Silvia Tabusca

Day four Masterclass opportunity - for those preparing their theses, looking to publication or undertaking fresh lines of research to be in conversation with some of those participating in the three-day open seminars. Please fill in the contact sheet on the area you are working on, so that we can facilitate ad day which responds to your particular area of academic and project formation need. Research Methodologies to consider, enabling of senior networks, building peer support, evaluation framing, coaching for research defence, opening of networks for potential internships and first appointments.

Convenors: Dr Carrie Pemberton Ford, Dr Simon Stockley, Dr Bonny Ling.

Certificates of attendance available for each day.

Break out rooms, discussion, networking, and breaking research every day.

Grab your place around the virtual table now to avoid disappointment and let your colleagues know.

Go to www.ccarht.org now to follow our developing timetable, and check out some of those bringing their cutting edge research to the table.

See you there.

Carrie Pemberton Ford