On Saturday, October 19th over 50 UWCRCN Students hosted a “Walk for Freedom” in our local town, Førde, which happened simultaneously in 450 other locations around the globe involving 70 million people. “It’s our way of telling the world that slavery still exists and that it will never be okay–not on our watch. Walk For Freedom is our global response to human trafficking–an outward expression of our inward desire to see slavery abolished everywhere, forever.” Our walk, together with a flash mob, aims at raising public awareness of modern slavery. We gave out hundreds of flyers with information including emergency contacts in and outside of Norway.

Our Mission doesn’t allow us to be just observers when other people lose their freedom and dignity. Our students publicly proclaimed the following:

“Slavery still exists in the 21st century. People like you and I bought and sold as commodities. People like you and I, in this city and in this nation. But you and I are here today. We refuse to just talk about injustice; to simply post about it. Instead, we’re here together in strength and numbers. We have the power to change the statistics. And we’re changing them right now. This is our Walk For Freedom. A walk for justice and human dignity. A walk for hope and restoration. From Australia to Ghana, India to Brazil. All over the world, we will abolish slavery with each step. Let’s never forget that we don’t just say it–we believe it. A world without slavery is possible. While human trafficking is destroying lives, we know that freedom will have the final word.”

Click here to see photos from the day

2009 Rafto Prize winner Malahat Nasibova with students

Theresa Aarhus, Vilde Mørch Hobæk and Lene Mortensen from RAFTO provided HR awareness training for our students on Monday September 30^th. They visited Global Politics classes and offered two sessions:

• Democracy Cake – analyzing all ingredients of democratic society
• Responsibility Cards – looking into social and corporate responsibility for the Human Rights abuses in DRC associated with coltan mining for the production of mobile phones and computer batteries.

All our first-year students were involved in a “Democracy Role Play” that modelled life in a mysterious country where many citizens ended up in prison or disappeared, journalists couldn’t publish freely, lawyers and doctors couldn’t perform their job.

To everyone’s surprise, the mysterious country exists, and behind the characters they played were real people. They were then able to meet the hero of the “Role Play”: Malahat Nasibova  -Azerbaijani journalist, Human Right defender and 2009 RAFTO Prize recipient.

Malahat’s message to our Students was “never give up”, always focus on what people need, share information and continue the struggle.

For an album of photographs from the day, click here.