Christine Resigns as ACRATH’s NEO

Christine Carolan has worked with and been committed to ACRATH over 19 years and, after 10 years in the role of National Executive Officer has resigned, effective December 2024. It will mark the end of a significant era in human trafficking work in Australia, but will also signal a new phase for the organisation. Her resignation comes as ACRATH prepares to mark 20 years.

Christine started working on human trafficking in 2001 in her role as Executive Officer with Good Shepherd Social Justice, prompted by her then workmate Kathleen Maltzahn.

“Kathleen heard about the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) call to act on human trafficking and she reminded me that our work was focused on supporting women, especially those on the margins. She pointed out that trafficked women would clearly fit that definition! So, the Social Justice Board and I as their EO expanded our social justice focus to include human trafficking,” Christine said.

In the following years Christine heard that two young Thai women had died in immigration detention in Australia after what seemed to have been an experience of human trafficking; Christine then began work collaborating with Project Respect and others.

 “Project Respect, an organisation founded by Kathleen, said we needed to work together as civil society to explore why the women were in Australia, and not just about the actual clinical circumstances of their deaths. Project Respect took the lead and we were able to eventually get a front-page article in The Australian on the deaths, exposing human trafficking and sexual exploitation. I learnt so much then about the vulnerability of those young Thai women to exploitation, and about the efficacy of civil society working together,” Christine said.

There have been many significant moments and mentors along the Christine/ACRATH journey but Christine says the project team who worked together to get a Shadow Report to the United Nations in New York in January 2006 was a turning point in her understanding of the power of advocacy and collaboration.

“Jennifer Burn and Louise Cleary csb lead the team of activists, lawyers, academics and Members of Parliament. I didn’t really believe in this project of writing for the UN when I was invited to work in the team; I thought the work would get lost in the bureaucracy of the UN! How wrong was I! By the end of that project, I was totally hooked. I could see that kind, hard-working, justice-focused women could link arms within Australia, within SE Asia, and globally, and make a significant difference. I learnt that seeking the common ground was the prerequisite for strong collaboration,” she said.

“Our foray into the world of slavery-free chocolate more than 15 years ago came after meeting with Mark Zirnsak, from the Uniting Church in Australia. He had learned about the terrible things going on in cocoa plantations on the other side of the world. We advocated for change and gradually saw more and more high-quality certified slavery-free chocolate come onto the shelves in Australia.”

“We’ve never done anything alone, it’s always been as part of a team and that’s so important. That’s not to say that networking is always easy, but where we looked to each other’s strengths, we built a much stronger team. I think this applies within ACRATH and in our external networking work. If we drill down to our common springboard – the trafficked person’s right to justice – we can get beyond differences and tensions.”

It was these early collaborations, and many times since that convinced Christine of the power of building networks with like-minded organisations and people. Together these networks have advocated for, and achieved, important changes to support victim/survivors of human trafficking in Australia and globally.

ACRATH’s achievements are many, but Christine will leave the job in December grateful that “we built a team, or maybe that we built a number of teams, who are feisty and justice-focused and committed”.