History
Justice Acts was founded 2008 by a woman working in a local community on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Human Trafficking was not as well-known a topic as it is today, particularly here South Africa. This woman began hearing more and more stories of young people, especially girls, moving into the city, either to other cities in South Africa or outside the country. Very often the family lost contact with these young people as soon as they left.
Moved by these stories, she did more research on what was happening, and came across the topic of human trafficking. This inspired her to begin writing a tool called “Traffick Proof”, that explains what human trafficking is and how you can protect yourself, your family, and the community you are living in. With that tool, Justice Acts began going into different communities, schools and churches and using “Traffick Proof” to raise awareness on human trafficking.
In 2010 the soccer World Cup came to South Africa. During this time the dimension of human trafficking grew immensely, to fulfill the wishes of the many soccer fans flooding the area. In that time Justice Acts was asked for their input in different spheres of society, media, businesses, churches, civil society and so on. During this time, we extended our work and began to offer different trainings, trainings specifically relevant to each sphere of society in combating human trafficking through their own area of influence.
After the World Cup, we moved into using the experiences that we had and implementing the knowledge gained from them in different countries around the world. A team of lawyers began a Justice Acts branch in New Zealand, primarily working on creating laws which can better protect victims of human trafficking. Shortly after they began, a team in France started to work raising awareness of the issue. In 2012, our work in France transitioned to begin building bridges between NGO´s and businesses, partnering to fight against human trafficking.
In addition to the long-term teams, we have been involved in numerous projects around the world. More information about these projects can be found in the Projects Section of this website.
Our team has also created different prevention tools, that are focused on kids and the youth. We had found that many of the victims that we met during our work, based their experiences partly on traumatic incidences in their past. We created “Creativity and justice” to reach out to those in high risk of being exploited. It is a program that combines teaching and practicing fine arts with teaching important values, like setting boundaries, self-value and others important personal skills.
In 2013 South Africa released new TIP (Traffiicking in Person) laws, that are very comprehensive. As exciting as it is, South Africa is working on a plan of how to implement those laws and make them known to all relevant players. We have moved into being part of that and created more trainings, like Police Trainings, Counselor Tranings and Trainings for neighbourhood watches.
Also in 2013, the team in France reformed. As Justice Acts International, we are partnering with Justice Acts France to work on a two year project to raise awareness in the South of France to protect immigrants from exploitation, as well as going to the origin and transit countries and raising awareness of human trafficking there.
Feel free to discover more about the different aspects on our website, or contact us if you have any more questions.