How the Home Office detained thousands of potential trafficking victims

Even when people are referred to the UK’s modern slavery framework, they may still be held.

Mo Farah who revealed yesterday that he was trafficked to the UK as a child and forced to work as a domestic servant. Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images

The British Olympic athlete Mo Farah revealed yesterday (11 July) that he was trafficked to the UK as a child and forced to work as a domestic servant. In the upcoming BBC documentary The Real Mo Farah, Farah shares that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin, and Mohamed Farah was the name given to him when he was brought to the UK from Djibouti at the age of nine.

Organisations campaigning on trafficking and modern slavery say Farah’s story shows how difficult it is for survivors of modern slavery to come forward, and how big the barriers they face to accessing support are. The Nationality and Borders Act passed this year, campaigners say, will raise the threshold for evidence required by victims, penalise victims who do not disclose quickly enough, and further restrict access to support, such as safe housing or counselling.