Dressed in a dark jacket and pants with neither accessories nor any overt makeup, her blonde hair tied simply in a ponytail, Julia Ormond was still the picture of charm and beauty.

The star of Hollywood blockbusters like "Legends of the Fall", "Sabrina" and "First Knight" was in Thailand last week, not as a glittering screen actress, but as a mission-minded goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime.

Ormond earned the applause of UN and government officials and non-governmental workers for her stirring speech at a conference on fighting human-trafficking in the Mekong region.

She's no stranger to the problem of humans exploiting humans, having worked in Russia in 1991, where she learned about mail-order brides and forced prostitution.

"When the UN approached me through Vital Voices [an international advocate for a greater role in society for women], I was very excited, because I know the UN has great access to information and I could pass it on to people who can potentially make a difference."

In the past six months Ormond has been back to Russia as well as to Ghana, Cambodia and India, and Thailand was the latest stop on a continuing journey.

She's witnessed a series of successful projects and received a better understanding of the problems and possible solutions.

She's also met the victims.

There were the Cambodian girls who'd been sold as virgins and raped repeatedly for a week. Then their vaginas were partially stitched up so they could be sold as "virgins" again.

"Some of these girls are as young as five or six, though the average age is 12," Ormond said.

"They're this tall," she added, indicating her shoulder as she was sitting.

"It is unimaginably horrific."

Ormond admitted that seeing such tragedies first-hand at first depressed her.

"I dreamed about their experiences and woke up exhausted."

But she saw that the victims were determined to move on in life, and she decided she had to as well. She saw the magnificent work that the aid workers are doing and shared their belief that the problem can be overcome.

"I don't think this is a global issue that's out of control," Ormond said. "This is doable if we prioritise, if we appreciate the size of the problem."

Calling the trafficking in humans "modern-day slavery", she stressed that the root cause is poverty. Alleviating poverty is just as important as helping the victims in stemming the cycle of trafficking, she went on to say.

Education offers one solution, for both children and adults.

"We need skills training for the adults, so that they're not vulnerable to being trafficked, to traffic their own children or to become traffickers themselves." 

Whatever the solutions, though, they must come from the community, she said, and they must be cultural-specific.

Certain cultural elements within a country make part of the population vulnerable to trafficking, she pointed out.

Cambodia has been gripped by violence and political conflict for four decades, and that "gives the nation a tendency to use violence in problem solving".

"If we can understand that," Ormond said, "then we can work within the culture to find a solution that's not judgmental or accusational - a solution in which the community can take pride."

Fans of Julia Ormond the actress, will be seeing her soon in Steven Soderbergh's "Guerilla" and David Lynch's "Inland Empire", but Julia Ormond the rights crusader vows to continue helping the victims of human trafficking, even as "difficult" as it is.

Asked whether celebrities take on such issues out of guilt, Ormond said she does it because it's a worthy cause.

"As an individual, if you're aware of the issues, it's too depressing not to do anything to solve it. Of course, that I'm trying to do something to get out of this depression is selfish."

Good intentions, she pointed out, are not enough. There are many humanitarian groups in the world, but if the aid they offer is not specific enough, it could worsen the situation.

By the same token, she said, global corporations intentions maybe less than pure but the money they contribute does great good.

"So people shouldn't look at the attention the donor is getting, but the results."

Sopaporn Kurz

The Nation