By day, they work in shimmering skyscrapers, wage boardroom battles and command stratospheric salaries from Hong Kong's leading legal, financial and telecommunications companies. Outside office hours, they are secret agents in the war on human trafficking in Asia, deploying their professional expertise to help the estimated 9.5 million trafficking victims across the region.
The plight of trafficked people might seem a million miles from the dazzling lifestyles of these city slickers, but the work of the newly formed Mekong Club aims to bridge that social divide. The high-powered group of Hong Kong professionals aims to parachute top lawyers in to tackle court cases, trace traffickers' cash trails and set up transborder hotlines for trafficking victims. The initiative is led by the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking to tackle trafficking in the six Mekong River countries - China, Thailand Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.
"We want to work with Asia's best corporate minds to tackle slavery," Mekong Club chairman and Hong Kong solicitor David Hall-Jones said. "Hong Kong can lead the way in fighting the trafficking of humans." Matthew Friedman, regional project manager for the UN project, said he was delighted with the enthusiasm of the club's members, many of whom are shielded with anonymity because of the nature of their work.
"There are a lot of people in Hong Kong who are successful and have a good job and a good life, and they really want to give something back," he said. "I went to one office and I was sitting down with the private sector people, and they pretty much said 'You have 15 minutes,'" Friedman said. "There was a senior partner there, and I thought he would be on his Blackberry the whole time. "Within 10 minutes of hearing some of the stories, he had put his Blackberry away. Within half an hour, he was up to the table. Within 45 minutes, he was leaning forward and saying, 'Have you guys thought about this? Have you thought about that? What about this?' It was almost like a spark went off."
The opportunity to tackle human trafficking is irresistible for many people, Friedman said. "It is just the right thing to do," he said. "This is about slavery. It is something that is morally repugnant, and they want to do something to help." The UN project is working with Robin Hood Asia, a New Zealand-based corporate social responsibility consultancy. Founder and chief executive Jude Mannion said the project gave people the chance to be heroes. "Human trafficking is a vast criminal problem," she said. "The game has to change if we are going to make any impact on this in our lifetime, and that is why we are turning to Hong Kong-based businesses to help."
Hong Kong was an ideal base for the counter-trafficking initiative because of its strategic location and the wealth of expertise in areas such as telecommunications, logistics and technology, which can be used to combat trafficking. The city also has deep pockets.
"Trafficking happens within the realm of bad business, of rotten business, so who better to address fixing that than the private sector?" Friedman asked. "People in the private sector tend to work with a different kind of accountability and bottom line. They have an efficiency and urgency about them. That kind of insight is instrumentally important to us."
The initiative is believed to be the first of its kind world-wide, but Friedman argued it shouldn't be the last: "This offers the possibility of being a model not just for south-east Asia but for South Asia and for other parts of the world." Hall-Jones said the Mekong Club's work would begin in earnest after a meeting of businesses who have pledged support to the project on April 26.