Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) invites you to attend the opening of their photography exhibition entitled “Child Protection & Trafficking: Is the Media telling the right(s) story?”
Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill
Wednesday, 17th November 2010
Arrival time – 17:30 to 18:00
Photography by documentary photographer and trafficking expert Melanie Hamman, alongside a selection of work produced by learner photographers of Umuzi Photo Club and curated by MMA’s child Media Monitors.
For the first time in South Africa, children have teamed up with a trafficking expert and used their critical media literacy skills to explore and show some of the reasons that underscore children’s vulnerability in South Africa. It also seeks to provide a visual context to human trafficking in South Africa.
“What are we seeing and hearing in the media about child protection and human trafficking? What is the media missing?”
We ask what has been reported about human trafficking and to what extent this has contributed to a fuller understanding of the issues involved or whether is has instead fuelled a limited and occasionally over sensationalised view of the problem.
Recent research suggests that the link between human trafficking and the World Cup was overstated or sensationalised in many quarters. Indeed exaggerated reports may have done more harm than good, first fostering fear, and then fatigue. However this fails to address that modern slavery in South Africa is an ongoing problem, which all too frequently falls under the radar. Human trafficking has many faces, and takes many forms. Working with children and key strategic partners we aim to reveal that trafficking remains a highly complex and multifaceted problem which is rooted deep in the socioeconomic challenges faced by too many of our children every day.
Our nation’s future depends on our children, their well being, their ambitions, and their passions. Yet, poverty, abuse, lack of access to basic services, stigmatisation, poor health and education, all contribute to the state of children in Africa as not only vulnerable but critical for our nations future. The alarm bells are ringing but child protection is missing the urgent response it requires.
With this exhibition, and with children giving voice to these issues, we hope to take the discussions and debates around the issue of children’s protection and trafficking post World Cup further and clarify where there is lingering uncertainty and confusion.
www.mediamonitoringafrica.org/cpt
RSVP
Melanie Hamman,
melanieh@mma.org.za
Mb: +2783 661 9223
Tel: +2711 788 1278
or
Laura Fletcher
Advocacy and Research Officer
Media Monitoring Africa
lauraf@mma.org.za
Mb: +2773 0463403
Tel: +2711 788 1278