Human trafficking is a growing business worth $150 billion per year, significantly more than the annual turnover of some of the world’s most profitable companies.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation is at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking, running programmes and supporting strategic initiatives to fight slavery worldwide. Visit www.justgiving.com/choosetosee to join the fight.
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Anti-Slavery Investigative Journalism
The global trade in human beings is bigger today than at any time in history. Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide. Yet human trafficking and slavery remain among the world’s most under-reported stories.
From the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar - smuggled into Thailand to be sold as slaves on fishing boats - to the first-hand accounts of human trafficking survivors in Pakistan and Qatar, the journalists at Thomson Reuters Foundation report globally on slavery, making sure there’s always a spotlight on the crime.
In the fight against human trafficking it is crucial that the widest possible audience is accurately informed, and that slavery survivors are given the opportunity to share their stories.
Help us expand our human trafficking and slavery coverage.
Anti-Slavery Journalism Training
When reporting slavery, journalists are confronted with a number of different challenges, from fact finding to crucial legal queries. The Thomson Reuters Foundation runs one-week-long training courses for professional journalists from all around the world wanting to report slavery and human trafficking.
At the course, participants learn to think across traditional news desks, seeing how coverage of slavery and trafficking involve: crime, spanning organized criminal networks, law enforcement and justice; politics, involving the success or failure of governments and international organizations to legislate solutions; corruption, due to the official complicity that allow trafficking and slavery to thrive; business, as pressure mounts on companies to clean up supply chains and consumers demand slave-free product. Reporting human trafficking might also lead reporters to look at the psychological needs of survivors, and the conditions that make people vulnerable in the first place, including poverty, climate change, migration, urbanization and humanitarian crises.
In the fight against human trafficking it is crucial that talented journalists gain specialized expertise.
Help us give them the tools to produce high-impact stories for widespread dissemination.
An international forum to identify effective solutions to fight slavery
Trust Women is the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual gathering dedicated to finding concrete solutions to fight slavery and to empower women worldwide. Each year, the two-day event brings together some 500 delegates from all corners of the world. Across the two days, top anti-slavery NGOs, business leaders, lawyers and government representatives connect, brainstorm and commit together to take action and forge tangible commitments to fight slavery and empower women to know and defend their rights.
As a direct result of Trust Women, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, set up a working group to encourage some of the biggest banks in the USA to contribute to the fight against human trafficking. The financial institutions agreed to share suspicious data with law enforcement agencies, and the working group issued international guidance aimed at helping the wider financial communities to identify and report irregularities in financial transactions that might be linked to human trafficking. The Thomson Reuters Foundation distributed the document to a select number of top financial institutions, law enforcement agencies and anti-trafficking NGOs. The guidance has led to an increase in the number of suspicious activities being reported to the New York District Attorney.
Through Trust Women, the Thomson Reuters Foundation ensures that the best anti-slavery NGOs and the most authoritative leaders in the fight against human trafficking connect with business leaders, lawyers, academics and government representatives, and together identify concrete solutions for change.
In the fight against human trafficking it is crucial that top decision makers and anti-slavery experts are connected.
Help us bring together the leaders in the fight against slavery, and to identify concrete steps to stop human trafficking.
Free legal assistance to anti-slavery NGOs
TrustLaw is the Thomson Reuters Foundation's global programme dedicated to spreading the practice of pro bono. Through TrustLaw, the Thomson Reuters Foundation connects the best law firms in the world with NGOs and social enterprises working to fight slavery and giving trafficking survivors a new start. TrustLaw also facilitates the production of ground-breaking legal research on slavery, like the one conducted by White & Case for Manila-based Visayan Forum. The research offered a comparative assessment of domestic workers’ rights looking at the national policies in place in Chile, France, Italy, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and Singapore.
Visayan Forum used the research to successfully negotiate for landmark legislation in the Philippines, the “Magna Carta for Domestic Workers”, passed in February 2013.
In the fight against human trafficking it is crucial that high-impact NGOs are given free access to the best available legal assistance.
Help us spread the power of pro bono worldwide to help anti-slavery organizations achieve their mission.
Strategic partnerships for high-impact solutions
The Thomson Reuters Foundation leads strategic initiatives to tackle human trafficking through innovative high impact solutions.
In India, the organization has partnered with the Freedom Fund to map and assess the options available to fight human trafficking and slavery through the rule of law. The Foundation has conducted field research, met with NGOs, judges, legal aid providers and lawyers across the country to evaluate how NGOs and victims use the legal system to fight slavery, looking at the challenges and the hurdles they face.
The research will be used to make key recommendations on steps that can be taken to improve legal outcomes for trafficking victims, from the effective prosecution of traffickers, to ways to obtain compensation for victims, to other measures that can improve the lives of victims, deter traffickers and combat trafficking. The initiative also aims to identify where and how additional funding could be most effectively invested in supporting legal interventions designed to have the maximum impact in reducing slavery.
In the fight against human trafficking it is crucial that innovative solutions are implemented on the ground.
Help us start more of these initiatives where they are needed the most.
Together, we can stop human trafficking and confine slavery to the history books. Choose to see.
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