Its plea came after CNN released shocking video footage of Africans being sold into slavery in Libya.

Excerpts of the video have been shared on social media and sparked outrage by many.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S2qtGisT34]

It has prompted a petition asking for the UK government to put pressure on Libya to stop enslavement of Africans. So far 90,000 thousand people have signed it.

Tim Nelson, international development director for Hope for Justice, told Premier what his reaction was to the footage.

He said: “The images bring home the reality of what slavery is today.

“It’s particularly shocking to see victims being chained and being sold, and what I also remember is through the work Hope for Justice does in the UK, we’ve seen trafficking gangs sell victims in the exact same way.”

Since the video and images went viral, a national anti- slavery march to the Libyan Embassy in London has been organised for next Saturday.

Nelson told Premier social media has been a useful platform to make people aware of important issues like modern day slavery.

He said: “There are 24.9 million people globally that are held in slavery. This brings to home those people’s plight.

“It’s not always the use of chains, quite often we see things like threats and exploitation – the reality is still the same for those victims.”

However, he encouraged people to not let their initial passion for the issue fade away, and said churches should invite speakers so congregations are…

In December 2016, they provided 146,798 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis; 61,093 of these went to children.

But a 13% increase in average foodbank use in the first six months of this financial year since April suggests an increased demand when it comes to Christmas.

Premier spoke to Alison Inglif-Jones, trustee of The Trussel Trust, who explained: “In December there are multiple pressures hitting families – the cold weather, the high energy bills and that’s of course particularly for people on pre-payment metres.”

She added that there is also pressure on foodbanks from others: “People who come to a Trussel Trust foodbank need to be referred by a social worker, school governor or MP – so they also want people to be fed before Christmas.

There has been a 30% increase in need for foodbanks in places where universal credit has rolled out, according to The Trussel Trust.

Inglif-Jones revealed some of the contributing factors: “Benefit sanctions and delays, increasingly low incomes and of course universal credit, financial pressures are on. We usually find people are just about getting on and then something happens.”

A witness, who cannot be named, said he heard the boy being beaten and then never saw him again.

He recently found out in a newspaper report the boy, who was aged under 10, had died.

The witness also said he was physically and sexually abused while in care and believed he had killed his mother after being told so by a nun, not finding out this was untrue until his mid-20s.

He was speaking at the latest phase of hearings at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry in Edinburgh, which is now taking evidence about institutions run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, which have issued an apology to anyone abused in their care.

The witness said he was taken to the Smyllum Park Orphanage in Lanark, South Lanarkshire, aged three in 1952.

He said he heard a boy being beaten “quite badly” behind closed curtains.

“We heard slap, slap, slap, and ‘shut up’, ‘shut up’. It was one of the nuns,” he said.

“The next day [the boy] didn’t show up. We all cheered because we thought he had got a family and he was away.

“It wasn’t until I saw the paper, the Sunday Post, that I found out he died, or he was killed.”

A BBC and Sunday Post investigation earlier this year found that at least 400 children from Smyllum Park are thought to be buried in an unmarked grave at the town’s St Mary’s Cemetery.

The orphanage was home to more than 10,000 children between opening in 1864 and closing in 1981.

Prosecutors have said there is no evidence a crime has been committed at the orphanage…