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Miliband vows to help the middle class - reaction: Politics live blog
Django to be reborn in new Franco Nero film
Thailand protesters tighten Bangkok blockade
Google in bid for smart home-devices market with $3.2bn Nest Labs purchase
Audiences baffled by UAE cut of The Wolf of Wall Street
Security tight as Egyptians start voting on new constitution
At least 200 drown in South Sudan ferry accident while fleeing fighting
Kim Dotcom to launch 'Megaparty' for New Zealand elections
Carrie Cracknell: erasing Blurred Lines
Man shot dead at movies after texting
Electricity tariff reform a hot issue among energy experts
Britons await human rights verdict in Saudi Arabia torture case
Three Rabobank traders charged in US with five-year plot to fix Libor
DRC conflict: children living in fear of violence as clashes continue
How social enterprises are combatting modern slavery
Kathleen Hanna: the riot grrrl returns
DRC's child refugees and victims of war speak out – video
Job security fears make Victorians the most anxious Australians
Chinese army banned from foreign cars
Man who pulled plug on Holden says politicians were not to blame
Michael Jackson's mother loses bid for retrial in case against concert promoter
China baby trafficking doctor sentenced
Scott Morrison to close four asylum seeker detention centres on mainland
Quitline calls up by 78% the month after plain packaging of cigarettes
My favourite pool: Blue Pool, Bermagui

Miliband vows to help the middle class - reaction: Politics live blog

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 01:29 AM PST

Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of all the day's political events as they happen, including David Cameron giving evidence to the Commons liaison committee on violence against women and energy, and reaction to Ed Miliband's Telegraph article

Andrew Sparrow

Django to be reborn in new Franco Nero film

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 01:22 AM PST

Cult spaghetti western character first seen in 1966 to be revived with original actor after Tarantino's reworking

In the wake of the mainstream success of Quentin Tarantino's western Django Unchained, it has been announced that a new Django film, starring Franco Nero, the Italian actor who originated the role in Sergio Corbucci's 1966 spaghetti western, is to play the gunslinger once again.

Although there have been over 30 films containing the character since 1966, there has only been one "official" sequel, 1987's Django Strikes Again, directed by Corbucci and starring Nero. Now, however,an American company called Point Blank has secured the rights to the character, and is aiming to set up a third Django film, to be called Django Lives.

According to the company's press release, Django Lives is set in 1915, when the older Django has become a "consultant to silent-movie Westerns... After getting entangled with racketeers, Django fights back, and all hell breaks loose."

In an effort to maintain the Tarantino connection, the producers have hired Joe D'Augustine to direct; D'Augustine is credited with "additional editing" on a number of the director's films, including Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill Vols 1 and 2.

Mark Boone Junior (Sons of Anarchy) and Noah Segan (Looper) have been added to the cast alongside Nero, but the "main heavy" and female lead are yet to be cast, according to producer David Hollander. "Both are really juicy parts."

Andrew Pulver

Thailand protesters tighten Bangkok blockade

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 01:04 AM PST

Capital remains calm with schools and businesses open as demonstrators stay on streets urging end to rule of Shinawatras

Protesters trying to topple Thailand's government have tightened the blockade around ministries and a hardline faction has threatened to storm the stock exchange, while major intersections in the capital Bangkok remained blocked.

The protesters had planned to "shut down" the city of 12 million people, but life continued normally in most places, with school classes restarting, commuters heading to work and most businesses remaining open.

Thousands of people – many of them southerners from out of town – slept in the streets in tents or on mats in the open air. Although the capital was calm and the mood among the tens of thousands of protesters remained festive, analysts said the scope for a peaceful resolution of the crisis was narrowing.

"As anti-government protesters intensify actions, the risk of violence across wide swaths of the country is growing and significant," an International Crisis Group (ICG) report said.

A student group allied to the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), the party of Suthep Thaugsuban, a career politician who stepped down as an MP to campaign against the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, has threatened to attack the stock exchange. Faction leader Nitithorn Lamlua told supporters on Monday it represented "a wicked capitalist system that provided the path for Thaksin to become a billionaire".

A PDRC spokesman said the bourse was not one its targets. "We will not lay siege to places that provide services for the general public, including airports, the stock exchange and trains. However, we will block government offices to stop them from functioning," Akanat Promphan told supporters at a rally.

Jarumporn Chotikasathien, president of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, told Reuters emergency measures had been prepared to secure the premises and trading systems.

Led by Suthep, the protesters are calling for an end to so-called money politics and corruption and the establishment of a new government free from the influence of the Shinawatra family.

Yingluck's brother, Thaksin, was ousted as prime minister in a military coup in 2006 but is widely believed to be pulling the strings from Dubai.

Protesters have been demanding Yingluck's resignation since November, when her Pheu Thai party tried to push through a late-night amnesty bill that would have allowed for the return of her much-maligned brother. At least eight people have been killed in protests, with seven injured at the weekend.

Analysts have raised concerns over a possible military intervention, with the army chief recently refusing to rule it out. But on Monday the protests were peaceful and festive, with singalongs and the sharing of food and drink. The protesters range from academics and businessmen to students, farmers and entrepreneurs, many of whom had travelled from the provinces. They were joined by celebrities and musicians.

Kate Hodal

Google in bid for smart home-devices market with $3.2bn Nest Labs purchase

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 01:01 AM PST

Nest Labs makes smart thermostats and smoke detectorsNest will let customers continue controlling devices through Apple products

Rory Carroll

Audiences baffled by UAE cut of The Wolf of Wall Street

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 12:45 AM PST

Heavy cuts have been made to the sex, drug use and bad language in Martin Scorsese's banker comedy, leaving relatively little film left

• Wolf of Wall Street: Jordan Belfort's rights payments may be seized
• The Wolf of Wall Street: the Guardian review

It's become famous for having more profanity than any other feature film, but Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street has fallen foul of its own foul mouth – at least in the United Arab Emirates.

The wild comedy-drama has been heavily edited for its sex and drug use, leaving relatively little film left. Its 180 minute running time has been reduced by 45 minutes, a quarter of the overall length. One audience member told Gulf News: "It's like looking at the Mona Lisa with sunglasses on. There are so many unorthodox cuts that you are never really sure what's happening." Dialogue was also muted during passages of bad language.

The UAE's National Film Council deny censoring the film – this edit apparently comes from the distributors keen to roll the film out across the Gulf region in a cut that will pass all local censors. A similar approach was recently taken in Europe by the producers of Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac, in an attempt to avoid censorship of its sex scenes. Scorsese himself reduced the amount of sex in the film after it looked likely to get an NC-17 rating in the US, which would have severely harmed its commercial prospects.

UK filmgoers who want to see all 506 F-words, 3 C-words, and 23 sexually explicit scenes can do so when the film is released on January 17. It was nominated for two Golden Globes, with Leonardo DiCaprio winning the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical. He was the subject of one of the best barbs of the night from hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, as they introduced him with: "And now, like a supermodel's vagina, let's all give a warm welcome to Leonardo DiCaprio".

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Security tight as Egyptians start voting on new constitution

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 12:36 AM PST

Polling to begin after lead-up marked by military regime pushing for yes vote on constitution and suppressing opposition

Patrick Kingsley

At least 200 drown in South Sudan ferry accident while fleeing fighting

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 12:11 AM PST

Between 200 and 300 people feared drowned after overcrowded ferry sinks on the White Nile river

At least 200 South Sudanese civilians drowned on Tuesday in a ferry accident on the White Nile river while fleeing fighting in the city of Malakal, an army spokesman said.

"The reports we have are of between 200 to 300 people, including women and children. The boat was overloaded," army spokesman Philip Aguer said. "They all drowned. They were fleeing the fighting that broke out again in Malakal."

Battles raged in several sites in South Sudan on Tuesday.

Heavy fighting was reported in Malakal, state capital of oil-producing Upper Nile state, as rebel forces staged a fresh attack to seize the town, which has already changed hands twice since the conflict in South Sudan began on 15 December.

"There is fighting anew in and around Malakal," UN aid chief for South Sudan Toby Lanzer said, adding that the peacekeeping base had been swamped with almost double the number of people seeking shelter, rising from 10,000 to 19,000.

The army reported heavy fighting reported south of Bor, as the government sought to retake the town from rebels, the largest in their control.

"We are marching on Bor, there was very heavy fighting late on Monday," Aguer said.

However, he rejected rebel claims to have captured the river port of Mongalla, situated between Bor and the capital Juba.

"We are north of Mongalla, we remain in full control there," Aguer said.

He also confirmed fighting south of the capital, around the town of Rajaf, on Monday.

According to the UN, 400,000 civilians have fled their homes over the past month.

The fighting is between groups loyal to South Sudan's president Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

Kim Dotcom to launch 'Megaparty' for New Zealand elections

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 12:07 AM PST

Megaupload founder cannot stand as a candidate himself, but vows to 'activate non-voters, the youth, the internet electorate'

Kim Dotcom has announced he is launching a political party in his adopted home of New Zealand to contest the country's general election this year.

The indicted internet entrepreneur says he is founding and funding the party, but will not be a candidate. Born Kim Schmitz in Germany, the 39-year-old is a New Zealand resident but not a citizen and cannot be a candidate under New Zealand law.

Dotcom said he would launch the party on Monday, the second anniversary of when police stormed his mansion near Auckland and arrested him. The authorities also shut down Megaupload, the popular file-sharing site he founded. He has since started a new file-hosting site, Mega.

American prosecutors accuse Dotcom of facilitating internet piracy on a massive scale. Charged with racketeering and money-laundering, he is fighting US attempts to extradite him. Dotcom argues he cannot be held responsible for those who chose to use his site to illegally download songs or movies.

Dotcom said next week he will launch his party website, a mobile app, and will begin registering party members. New Zealand law requires political parties to have 500 paid members.

Dotcom said he had some good candidates but wanted to keep those and other details a surprise for the launch. "As you can imagine, everybody wants to know," he said.

Dotcom has been hinting about his plans for months on Twitter: "My political party will activate non-voters, the youth, the internet electorate," he wrote last week.

It's not clear what policies the party would promote. Dotcom has been outspokenly critical of both liberals such as President Barack Obama and conservatives including New Zealand's prime minister, John Key.

But some observers believe Dotcom could influence the election. Opinion polls in New Zealand show a fairly even balance between conservative and liberal voters. Under the country's proportional system, parties need to win just 5% of the vote to get a seat in parliament. Even if Dotcom's party didn not win a seat, it could still take votes away from other parties.

"Kim Dotcom could throw a real spanner in the works of this year's general election," Bryce Edwards, a political commentator and lecturer at the University of Otago, wrote on his blog. "His promised new party is far from certain to get into parliament, but depending on how well it tickles the fancies of some of the more radical, marginalised, and disillusioned voters and non-voters, the so-called Mega party could have a huge impact on who forms the next government."

Dotcom's extradition case has become entangled in the New Zealand legal system and has been the subject of numerous delays. US authorities say they expect the case to be heard in July although appeals after that could delay a final outcome until next year.

New Zealand's government has yet to set a date for the election. Many observers expect it will be held between September and November.

Carrie Cracknell: erasing Blurred Lines

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 12:00 AM PST

New theatre show Blurred Lines, provoked by last year's summer pop smash, puts misogyny and rape culture across all the arts in its sights. Director Carrie Cracknell tells Maddy Costa why she hired a male writer – and why men should watch it, too

Summer 2013, and controversy is raging. Robin Thicke's supremely catchy song Blurred Lines – in which a man in a nightclub tries to persuade a beautiful woman to stop being a "good girl" and do what he knows she really wants – is being banned from student unions up and down the country, condemned in social and mainstream media for encouraging non-consensual sex, and topping pop charts across the globe. The debate is charged by the song's video, in which women wearing nothing but G-strings and clompy shoes cavort around three men in suits who clearly can't believe their luck.

For theatre director Carrie Cracknell, whose new show takes its title from the song, Blurred Lines is a red rag. When I wonder whether it's prudishness that makes people recoil from it, she argues: "It's really easy for women to be accused of being prudish, but there is an absolute line about sexual consent that cannot be blurred. The rage I feel in relation to that song is about the idea of strong men, fully dressed, animalising and brutalising a group of scantily clad women.

"Of course sex is part of our life, but rape is not sex, and non-consensual sex for young women is a massive problem. A whole generation are growing up with their first sexual experiences being pornography, which is hateful and misogynistic, and this song is the tip of that iceberg. Anyway, rant over." And she stops, suddenly sheepish.

It seems odd that the 33-year-old should feel the need to apologise for expressing herself strongly, but it turns out this has been a running theme in the Blurred Lines rehearsal room. "That anxiety about being strident or pushy comes back to the socially constructed idea of gender," she suggests, "and how women feel they have to find a feminine version of power to get what they want."For Blurred Lines, which opens at the National Theatre Shed this week, she's working with eight female actors – including Sinead Matthews, Ruth Sheen, Claire Skinner and Michaela Coel – and a male writer, Nick Payne, to devise a show that tackles the representation of women across film, television, theatre and pop. It's useful, Cracknell says, to have a male writer taking part: Payne describes himself as a feminist, and argues that the issues with which they're grappling – casual misogyny, the normalisation of the sex industry, rape culture, and on-going problems to do with work and parenting – are not exclusively women's. "Nick said in rehearsal one day: a lot of this is a male problem. Rape is a male problem. Men are not taught that they have to take responsibility for whether a girl says yes or no. Of course we could argue that it should be a female playwright, but his perspective and questioning have been as relevant as mine."

Apart from Thicke's song, Blurred Lines has its roots in the work that pulled Cracknell into the mainstream: her 2012 production of A Doll's House, the Ibsen play championed by feminists because it depicts a woman walking out on her husband and children in an attempt to discover her real self. The production, starring Hattie Morahan as a fluttering, manipulative Nora, had two successful runs at the Young Vic in London before transferring to the West End; it moves to New York in February.

"The first question we asked when we started making A Doll's House was: what does the play look like now? What's the relationship between the gender politics of the 1890s and the world we live in? The thing that Hattie drew out was this idea that Nora's power is seated in her sexuality. That really struck me, because of this idea that women are more sexualised now than they've ever been, or trying to move towards an ever-narrowing ideal of what it means to be beautiful and therefore powerful."

Are things really worse now, or is it more that we expect decades of feminism to have improved the situation? "Women have always been objectified more than men," Cracknell says. "What happens now is a pernicious, deep-rooted connection between global capitalism and an unobtainable physical ideal that feels overwhelming."

To coincide with the production, Cracknell made a short film for the Young Vic and the Guardian, in which Nora is updated to a modern working mother, falling to pieces as she struggles with her impossible juggling act. Payne co-wrote it with her, and had a strong influence on her thinking about both Noras when he handed her a copy of Kat Banyard's wakeup call to a generation of women, The Equality Illusion. Reading it, Cracknell says, "I had a feminist awakening. I'm of a generation that, to some extent, have been told that we're equal, that women have every opportunity men have. But I believe Kat's thesis: the equality we'd been sold was an illusion. Women are still disproportionately disempowered in public life and being paid less than men, while sexual harassment and violence are endemic."

None of this occurred to Cracknell as a teenager. "I was raised with the idea that it was irrelevant that I was a woman: you just had to get on with being funny, being kind and working hard." Back then, theatre was a hobby; her real ambition was to be a politician. She had a "strong leftwing upbringing": her mother was a primary-school headteacher; her father a businessman who taught at Oxford Brookes University and became a local councillor. "The first time I voted was for my dad," Cracknell recalls. She studied history at Nottingham with full intentions of becoming an MP, but fell into theatre in her first year. Now she pins her socialist hopes on her nephew, who is also studying history and politics at Nottingham and wants to run the Labour party. "I've asked if I can be in his cabinet on gender and culture," she laughs.

She spent a few years assisting directors including Dominic Dromgoole and Katie Mitchell, then at 26 became the youngest artistic director in the country, co-running the Gate in London with Natalie Abrahami. "It felt like this punk little venue," she says. "Natalie and I were interested in experimenting with what theatre and dance look like when they're together, and we had a brilliant five years where we got to make loads of joyful, public fuck-ups."

She managed to combine that with having two children, now aged two and four. Cracknell won't talk about work and motherhood, but does admit that she finds balancing her own ambitions complex. "My desire to parent is as strong as my desire to move forward. But I feel calm about making a bit less work, and enjoy having more time to develop it. A Doll's House was born out of a year of preparation because I was on maternity leave; I probably couldn't have made that work without that space to cook it in my mind."

So far, she says, being a woman hasn't diminished her opportunities. Alongside her West End debut with A Doll's House, last year she directed her first opera, a well-received Wozzeck for ENO. But she feels a general frustration with theatre culture: "It's still a male-dominated world, because the stories we tell are inherited from a culture in which women weren't allowed to do those things. We're only in the second generation in which women have been able to take full control in public life; and we still predominately think the stories of men are more important and interesting than the stories of women."

Recently, she was invited to direct a play for the National's biggest space, the Olivier, and struggled to find a female character with the "scale or scope of emotional depth" to fill the room. Somewhat predictably, the play she's going to direct is a Greek tragedy, Medea.

That's in June; before that she'll be at the Royal Court directing a new play by Simon Stephens dissecting rock'n'roll celebrity, and contributing to the life of the theatre as associate director. One of her key tasks is dealing with gender imbalance. "An American actress brilliantly suggested that you could take every screenplay and change half the male character names to female ones. Why can't the doctor or the policeman just be women?"

Despite that early ambition to become an MP, Cracknell is constantly surprised by the extent to which politics, gender or otherwise, now govern her theatre-making. "I used to call my work 'political with a small p': it was about the human experience. As I get older, I understand that the human experience is at the heart of a bigger experience. Rather than my work always being about the story, it's about the context for the story as well."

Maddy Costa

Man shot dead at movies after texting

Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:41 PM PST

Police in Tampa, Florida, arrest retired police officer, 71, after argument in Tampa cinema turned deadly

Electricity tariff reform a hot issue among energy experts

Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:41 PM PST

Consumers who sweat it out during a heatwave pay just the same for ‘poles and wires’ as those who turn up the air conditioning

Lenore Taylor

Britons await human rights verdict in Saudi Arabia torture case

Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:39 PM PST

Four who say they were beaten and raped and subjected to sleep deprivation were blocked from suing their alleged abusers

Four Britons who were subjected to "severe torture" in Saudi Arabia will learn on Tuesday whether or not their human rights were breached when they were blocked from suing their alleged abusers.

Ron Jones, who a Guardian investigation revealed could not have carried out a bombing in the capital Riyadh, is among those who say they were beaten, raped and subjected to sleep deprivation and psychological abuse. The European court of human rights is due to decide whether a decision that foreign states and their officials were immune from civil actions breached their right to access to court.

The Scottish tax adviser was injured in the explosion in 2001, but he was seized from his hospital bed by agents from the interior ministry, who claimed he was responsible for it. His hands and feet were caned and beaten with a pickaxe handle. He was also subjected to sleep deprivation, beatings and psychological duress, as well as being drugged in a 67-day ordeal.

Jones finally signed a statement admitting responsibility for the bombing, saying he had signed of his own free will, but he has always maintained that he was tortured.

He has spent years pursuing his alleged abusers through the courts, along with Alexander Mitchell, William Sampson and Leslie Walker, who were detained and tortured in Saudi Arabia after a separate series of bombings.

Speaking in 2002, Jones said he was held in solitary confinement for two days after he was taken from hospital and then the torture began. He told the Guardian: "They said they knew I was part of the bombing circle, that I had planted the bomb, and that if I didn't admit it they would torture me until I confessed.

"They punched me, kicked me, bounced me off the walls. Then the caning started. They caned the soles of my feet and then they started caning my hands, sometimes with pickaxe handle. They told me they had arrested my wife and son and that they were doing all this to them as well.

"There's a period of about a week that I can't really recall. I had a hair sample test done when I got back which showed I was given a rohypnol-style [sedative] drug. They tried sleep deprivation, too. They would interrogate you all night and not let you sleep during the day."

He said his confession came when he realised "they had won". "I didn't care what the consequences were," he said. "They recorded a statement from me in which I confessed to the bookshop bombing. Alcohol was never mentioned. I swore another statement saying I had not been mistreated and that I had confessed willingly to this."

In June 2006, the law lords accepted claims by the Saudi government, supported by its British counterpart, that its agents were protected by the State Immunity Act 1978 from proceedings in Britain and overturned a 2004 decision allowing a damages claim.

Kevin Rawlinson

Three Rabobank traders charged in US with five-year plot to fix Libor

Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:10 PM PST

Briton and Australian are among bankers facing court as global inquiry into scandal deepens

DRC conflict: children living in fear of violence as clashes continue

Posted: 13 Jan 2014 11:00 PM PST

World Vision report gives a voice to young survivors of the Congo conflict and calls on governments to push for peace

Mapendo, 16, is from eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a region blighted by years of conflict. She says fear is with her daily, dictating how she lives. "I'm terrified of walking along roads because I don't want to be raped for the third time," she told World Vision, which has interviewed more than 100 children in camps and communities in North and South Kivu. These provinces have borne the brunt of the violence that has killed and displaced millions of people for more than 20 years in the DRC.

More than a third of respondents told the charity they were afraid every day, while more than half had been orphaned or separated from their parents. A quarter had been forced to live without any adult support. More than a third described witnessing or experiencing episodes of violence, at times extreme, in the World Vision report, No One to Turn To. "They came and were killing people with machetes," Sifa, 13, said. "I saw them slit people's throats. I saw a neighbour have his two arms and toes cut off."

Despite peace efforts, the charity said not enough was being done to ensure children's needs were being addressed by leaders. Last February, the Congolese government and 10 regional governments signed the peace, security and co-operation framework aimed at ending foreign backing of armed groups in the DRC and improving relations between countries in the region.

This year, regional governments are developing a plan of implementation of the framework. This will include the establishment of benchmarks and follow-up measures to ensure signatories deliver on their commitments. A leaked UN document last December, however, underlined how hard it will be to achieve lasting peace.

The confidential report by a UN group of experts said recently defeated M23 rebels in eastern DRC have continued to recruit fighters in neighbouring Rwanda, while the Congolese army had been involved in human rights abuses and corruption.

"The group has documented that M23 received continued support from Rwandan territory," the UN Group of Experts said in its final report to the security council's Congo sanctions committee. "The group has received credible information that sanctioned M23 leaders are moving freely in Uganda and that M23 has continued to recruit in Rwanda."

The independent panel also accused armed groups and the Congolese army of human rights abuses, including use of child soldiers, summary executions and sexual violence, and profiting from illegal mining operations in resource-rich eastern Congo.

The UN experts have repeatedly accused Rwanda of backing the M23 rebellion, a claim Kigali has rejected. The UN security council has blacklisted M23. Rwanda has repeatedly intervened in Congo, saying it had to hunt down the Hutu militia who fled after the 1994 genocide. Rwanda and the DRC have fought two wars over the past two decades.

Rwanda has accused Congolese troops of collaborating with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a charge Kinshasa has denied. Hutus who fled Rwanda after the genocide of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus make up about 30% of FDLR fighters, according to the UN.

World Vision called on governments in the region to stop all support to armed groups and to create conditions to support and encourage the return and reintegration of former fighters, where appropriate, with particular attention to the immediate release of children from armed groups. It called on UN peacekeepers in Monusco (UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to avoid harming children and families in any military operations and to strengthen capacity in child protection.

"Millions of dollars, thousands of people's efforts, and several decades have all been spent trying to secure a lasting peace for children in eastern DRC," World Vision said. "But these efforts have not gone far enough. A lack of co-ordination, fleeting attention and focus, and insufficient access to those most in need all make achieving wellbeing by Congolese children difficult, but not impossible."

The children see education as crucial to improving their lives and in most cases the only way to escape poverty and insecurity. "I want to rebuild the life I had before the war," said Rashid, 16. "I want to live in a peaceful environment where I can go to school with no problems."

Mark Tran

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How social enterprises are combatting modern slavery

Posted: 13 Jan 2014 10:59 PM PST

Rich McEachran explains how social enterprises are a sustainable solution to modern slavery worldwide

It is estimated that nearly 30 million people around the world are trapped in modern slavery while many others have survived human trafficking or are in situations of risk. Social enterprises could offer a sustainable solution to the problem of economic vulnerability that ensnares people in modern slavery.

The UK's modern slavery bill, that will tighten laws on human trafficking, was published at the end of last year and will be introduced before the current session of parliament ends next spring. The draft bill briefly mentions that the government will work with businesses to "ensure their workforce and supply chains are not exploited", but does not explain how. In fact there is little mention of the role businesses or charities can play in countering the issue in the whole 62-page document.

One criticism of the bill has been that it will fail to provide adequate protection to trafficking survivors. According to a policy director at Focus on Labour Exploitation, the bill's "narrow focus on prosecution also excludes prevention measures required to root out exploitation in high-risk labour sectors".

"Unless we address the root causes of trafficking, rather than just the symptoms of it, anti-slavery efforts will never win," explains David Batstone, president and co-founder of Not For Sale, a charitable organisation which acts as an incubator for business ideas designed to empower vulnerable communities. "For example, 95% of individuals that [we support] were unemployed when they were trafficked. No matter how many laws we change, or how many services we provide, these approaches alone cannot eliminate the vulnerability gap."

The main root cause is recognised as economic vulnerability. Not For Sale understand the need for social enterprises to be part of the solution and the need to fight the criminal business of modern slavery with business itself. Social enterprises can act as a form of rehabilitation for survivors in high-trafficked communities, through the creation of mass-market job and product opportunities, and through a combination of education, skills training and support. By providing economic and social stability, social enterprises can also stem the possible displacement of populations.

"By engaging social entrepreneurs in the fight against modern slavery, we harness the market to create and scale true change … for those most vulnerable to exploitation," says Batstone.

One example of a product that Not For Sale has helped bring to market is REBBL, a herbal tonic drink whose ingredients are sourced from indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon. The drink is sold throughout California and REBBL donate a portion of its revenue to Not For Sale, who reinvest it in the indigenous communities' economic and social infrastructures. The aim is to reduce the likelihood of those at risk being lured into slavery with false promises of employment.

Products like REBBL not only provide sustainable solutions to slavery, but bring transparency to global supply chains by bringing at-risk communities closer to consumers in the US market. While the majority of ethically-sourced products tap into the demands of conscious-minded consumers REBBL is more concerned with closing the loophole to ensure those at risk of exploitation don't fall through the net and prevent survivors from being re-trafficked.

Products like REBBL not only provide sustainable solutions to slavery, but bring transparency to global supply chains by bringing at-risk communities closer to consumers in the US market. While the majority of ethically-sourced products tap into the demands of conscious-minded consumers, REBBL is more concerned with closing the loophole to ensure those at risk of exploitation don't fall through the net and prevent survivors from being re-trafficked.

Young women and girls are the group most at risk of being trafficked or re-trafficked, particularly into the sex trade. The Somaly Mam Foundation has recently opened a social enterprise-beauty salon in Cambodia to address the issue.

The salon in Siem Reap, launched in partnership with Estée Lauder and AFESIP Cambodia (Agir Pour les Femmes en Situation Précaire, French for "acting for women in distressing situations"), provides survivors with both education and vocational training. Young women have the opportunity to earn a nominal salary while acquiring customer service skills and learning how the business operates. They will also be helped to secure micro-loans to build their own businesses.

"This project can help to empower survivors with a choice in their lives," explains executive director Gina Reiss-Wilchins. "It offers them a chance to become self-sufficient and empowered agents of change in Cambodia's rapidly growing economy – helping to create a society that says 'no more' to slavery and the oppression of women and girls."

Reiss-Wilchins adds: "We definitely see this as a model that can be picked up by other corporations as well, particularly in areas like manufacturing and hospitality."

Through providing services to survivors in the short-term, social enterprises can leverage sustainable and effective solutions to curb the growth of the slavery industry in the long run. Start-ups, social enterprises and business ideas can aid survivors on the path to socio-economic independence.

Do you have a social enterprise blogpost, story or resource you'd like to share with the network? Email us: social.enterprise@theguardian.com

For more news, opinions and ideas about the social enterprise sector, join our community

Rich McEachran

Kathleen Hanna: the riot grrrl returns

Posted: 13 Jan 2014 10:49 PM PST

Everett True: The woman who spearheaded the Riot Grrrl movement is back, with a film about her life, a new band, an Australian tour – and thoughts on Pussy Riot

Everett True