Global justice ministry finds new leader
According to the World Bank, sex trafficking kills and disables more women and girls between the ages of 15 and 44 than cancer, traffic accidents, malaria, and war combined. Ed Wilson is ready to do something about it.
LONDON, ON—Ed Wilson, the incoming executive director of International Justice Mission Canada, believes the same “indomitable spirit” that drove Canada’s military to victory on D-Day 70 years ago animates most Canadians today to defeat global sex trafficking and slavery.
“At the end of the first day, the Canadian units had advanced further inland than any of the other forces,” says Wilson. “Sometimes it takes us a while to get moving, but when we get fired up, we play for keeps. We refuse to take no for an answer.”
A former Vineyard pastor, Wilson joined IJM Canada in 2006, becoming its chief operating officer in 2011. Last October, he became its acting executive director when Jamie McIntosh stepped down.
McIntosh founded International Justice Mission’s Canadian partner office in 2002 as a faith-based, non-profit organization that seeks justice for the millions of exploited and oppressed people around the world, and protects the poor from violence. Wilson shares that vision and passion.
“The thing that has motivated me throughout my life,” he says, “has been a desire to make the Good News practical and tangible for people who are deprived and oppressed.”
IJM Canada is one of six partner-organizations under the global International Justice Mission banner alongside the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, and Australia.
In 2013, they together were able to bring relief from oppression to 3,555 children, women and men, and set 2,266 others free from forced slave labour. This year, IJM Canada is directing eight donor-funded projects around the world.
One of these, says Wilson, involves developing a program to “build the capacity of the judiciary in Bolivia to provide a better application of justice for child victims of sexual assault.” On two occasions, they have taken small teams of Canadian judges to Bolivia to consult with judges there on the treatment of children in the courts.
IJM is also addressing “property-grabbing” in Uganda and Zambia. “These are longstanding practices of women and orphans being thrown off their land and deprived of their property when the head of the household passes away,” he says.
Closer to home, Wilson says one of his main challenges will be to make Canadians in general—and churches in particular—aware of the true extent of all this human suffering.
“Sex trafficking is an issue for instance that has been given a lot of attention by the media,” he says, “but it’s simply an expression of gender violence that according to the World Bank, kills and disables more women and girls between the ages of 15 and 44 than cancer, traffic accidents, malaria, and war combined."
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