One of the most important annual gatherings of anti-slavery leaders is set to get bigger and better this year.
The Freedom From Slavery Forum will double in size and move to the Global South for its fifth annual convening. The event is slated for December 3-5, 2018 in Bangkok.
The forum, for which Free the Slaves serves as the secretariat, is an annual gathering designed to bring leaders from the anti-slavery field together to coalesce, create partnerships, discuss promising practices, and develop a shared agenda for action.
2017 Forum Participants at Stanford University
In 2017, more than 50 different organizations were represented at Stanford University in California (the forum’s report is here and executive summary is here). Participants discussed the state of the anti-trafficking field, as well as five thematic priorities:
- Prevalence Studies and Determinants of Slavery: focusing on the new global estimates of modern slavery, which were recently released by the International Labor Organization, the Walk Free Foundation and the International Organization for Migration.
- Applications of Technology: how organizations can use a design-thinking framework to solve complex problems both in the field and internally.
- Intervention – What Works: a session that looked at challenges faced by NGOs relating to enforcement of victim rights, the criminalization of victims, corruption, and worker protection.
- Survivor Leadership and Inclusion: with emphasis placed on the importance of elevating survivor voices and building survivor leadership programs within organizational structures.
- Network and Coalition Building: focusing on how NGOs might best interact with Alliance 8.7, the International Labor Organization’s newest initiative to eradicate forced labor, modern slavery, human trafficking and child labor.
The 2017 forum concluded with commitments to scale-up the event and include more representatives from the Global South, more survivor leaders, and additional voices from other disciplinary backgrounds.
The 2018 forum will serve to catalyze civil society involvement in the global campaign to achieve U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 8.7, the end of modern slavery by 2030.
