Take Action to Eliminate Modern Slavery

Human trafficking is also referred to as modern slavery. Child labor, child marriage, child trafficking, domestic servitude, forced labor, labor trafficking, and sex trafficking are all forms of human trafficking. Every year, millions of people are trafficked and forced to work against their will, including within the United States.  Practically every good and service we buy contains human trafficking at some point in its supply chain.  

Here’s what you can do about it.

Tackle root causes

Women and girls’ rights

It is important to know that people of all gender identities are trafficked and forced into both the sex trade and other labor industries.  That said, many people, rightfully, focus on gender (in)equity and securing women and girls rights as a means to prevent and respond to human trafficking. 

Labor rights/workers’ rights

When work, particularly low-wage work, is regulated to ensure fair wages and benefits—and when work is dignified, safe, and healthy—then the conditions under which human trafficking can flourish are diminished, and workers are not as vulnerable to exploitation. 

Corporate accountability

As the demand for fair trade and ethically sourced products and services increases, we must also demand enforcement-focused and legally-binding commitments from corporations to detect and root out human trafficking and forced labor in their supply chains. 

Immigrant rights

We must demand immigration reform that ends inhumane and racist immigration policies that limit immigration options and force people to trust traffickers, visas that tie workers to their abusive employers, and threats of deportation that make migrants more vulnerable to human trafficking.

Sex trafficking and labor trafficking often become separated from each other. Instead of thinking about human trafficking holistically, many people focus on sex trafficking because they consider it to be more pervasive or more egregious than labor trafficking. However, data indicates that across the globe there is often more labor trafficking than sex trafficking. Further, many people in labor trafficking situations also experience sexual violence, blurring the lines between sex trafficking and labor trafficking. A comprehensive focus on preventing and responding to all forms of human trafficking is necessary.

Instead of using a term like “unskilled labor”, consider a term like “low-wage labor” to acknowledge that low-wage jobs often require a lot of skill, and many high-paying jobs don’t inherently employ people that are more skilled than people with low-paying jobs.

Take personal accountability

Practically every good and service that we use is touched by forced labor, a form of human trafficking, at some point in its supply chain.  As a consumer, you have the power to change this. 

If you can afford to do so, take these actions:

• Buy goods and services at fair prices.  If a price is too good to be true, it means someone is cutting corners somewhere.  If you are paying a fair price it is more likely that the company treats its workers fairly and has a clean supply chain. 

• Support companies that allow unionizing, adhere to a $15 minimum wage (U.S-based) or a living wage (elsewhere), and conduct social audits to eliminate forced labor in their supply chains.  Certified B Corporations don’t always do all of these things, but they are a good place to start. 

• Avoid companies that use child and forced labor in their supply chains. Check out the U.S. Department of Labor’s latest List of Goods Produced by Child and Forced Labor or Know the Chain’s Benchmark Reports.

• If there is a company whose product or service you enjoy who is on these lists, or who doesn’t adhere to these standards, contact them to let them know you are a customer who cares about these issues and ask them what they are doing about it.

• Encourage your place of work, school, and stores you regularly buy from to institute these same purchasing practices.

• Learn more about how to harness your consumer power for good.

A supply chain is the collection, movement, and transformation of raw materials into finished products, transportation of those products, and distribution to the end-user. It includes producers, vendors, warehouses, transportation companies, distribution centers, and retailers. Most retailers say they aren’t responsible for the forced labor in their supply chains because they can’t control their producers, vendors, etc. It’s not true, and it’s time to change it.

Corporate Social Responsibility is often more of a marketing stunt than a true commitment to the highest social, economic, environmental and governance standards. The Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network offers a model of enforcement-focused and legally-binding commitments that assign responsibility for improving working conditions to the global corporations as the top of supply chains.

Learn the difference between sex trafficking and sex work

Support sex workers instead of judging or stigmatizing them.  People get involved in sex work by choice, circumstance, or coercion.  Some people — known in the human trafficking space as “abolitionists”, and more broadly as SWERFs (sex worker exclusionary radical feminists)— conflate sex work with sex trafficking, denying the autonomy of consensual sex workers.

Other anti-trafficking advocates, known as “rights-based”, believe that consensual sex workers have the right to fair, safe, and legal work, just like workers in any other industry. Rights-based advocates believe that it’s only sex trafficking when there is an element of coercion (unless the person is under 18).  Further, they posit that using human trafficking as a means to criminalize sex work or deny sex workers’ rights pushes sex work underground and makes it more difficult to identify human trafficking.  It also puts consensual sex workers at more risk of violence.  

We recommend using a rights-based approach.  Let’s strengthen protections for sex workers by choice, create alternatives for sex workers by circumstance, and eliminate forced labor which leads to sex work by coercion (aka sex trafficking).

Sex work includes all areas of the sex industry where people are paid to engage in sex acts or sexually explicit behavior (e.g., prostitutes, pornographic models and actors, phone sex operators, sexual roleplay actors) and those paid to engage in live sexual performance (e.g., webcam sex, sex shows, erotic dancers such as strippers, go-go, lap, burlesque and peep show dancers).

Support policy and legislation to prevent and respond to human trafficking

Let your elected officials know you support local, state, and federal laws and policies that prevent and respond to human trafficking and modern slavery.  Keep an eye out for:

• the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPRA) every two years.  The TVPRA is set to be reauthorized in 2021.  Follow ATEST for updates.

• efforts to decriminalize sex work.  Oppose policies that have the unintended consequence of making sex workers less safe and support those that protect sex workers.  Learn more at Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP).

• immigration reforms that expand protections for immigrant workers. Keep up-to-date at the Migration that Works.

• labor laws and policies that protect vulnerable workers and support unionizing. Learn more at Jobs with Justice.

• workers’ Bills of Rights at the state and national level such as the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and the Essential Workers Bill of Rights.

• laws and policies that monitor labor violations and forced labor in supply chains.

What can you do today?

Go to 5Calls.org and choose one of the immigration or worker’s rights options. Once you enter your location, they give you your reps’ contact info and a script on what to say

Sign this petition from the National Domestic Workers Alliance in support of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Once legislation is passed, continue advocating to create the political will to ensure each law’s successful implementation. For example, demand that budgets are approved to adequately fund implementation.

Not sure how to contact your elected officials? Check out our posts Who Are My Reps? and How to Contact Your Reps.

Donate to and volunteer with organizations using holistic approaches

When considering organizations to donate to or volunteer with, ask the following questions:

1. Do they have a survivor advisory committee and/or survivors on the board of directors?
   Human trafficking survivors often have little input into the programs and policies that affect them.  Support organizations that involve survivors in all stages of decision-making and encourage them to participate on equal terms.

2. Do they address human trafficking in a holistic manner?
   While it is ok for an organization to specialize in one thing (e.g. child sex trafficking), it is important that they advocate for holistic approaches to prevent and respond to all forms of human trafficking.  Efforts to elevate and direct resources to one type of trafficking over another harms the movement as a whole.  

3. If they provide direct services, how many survivors do they support annually and what type of support do they offer?
   It can take years for survivors to recover.  They often require a variety of assistance including: short-term shelter, long-term housing, mental health support, job training, immigration support, enrollment in public benefits programs, etc. The more services an organization provides and the longer they support each individual survivor, the fewer survivors they are likely to serve annually.  Conversely, an organization could serve a large number of survivors each year but may provide very few or low-quality support services. Also look for service providers that seek to empower survivors through rights-based, low-threshold treatment and services versus restricting rights in the name of recovery.

4. If they do advocacy, do they support the types of laws and policies that you believe in?
   Watch out for organizations whose main goal is to end prostitution and eliminate the sex industry.  These groups often conflate sex work with sex trafficking and are only concerned about the sex trafficking of women and girls.  They use an “end demand” approach, and they deny the agency and self-determination of sex workers working in the industry by choice or circumstance.  Look for organizations that support sex workers’ rights and use a rights-based approach to ending human trafficking. 

Read our post Making the Most Of Your Monetary Donations.

If you see something, say something

No, that doesn’t mean become a vigilante or a nosy neighbor.  But if you or someone you know may be in danger call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888 to report a tip.  They are equipped to screen the situation to help identify if it is truly a human trafficking case and support with next steps.

They also provide international hotline numbers for tips outside of the U.S.

Donate | Follow | Amplify

Use the above question guide to find your own organization, or consider donating to one or more of the following organizations.

Global  

The Freedom Fund* leads the global movement to end modern slavery by identifying and investing in the most effective frontline efforts in the countries and sectors where modern slavery is most prevalent. 

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW)* is a network of nonprofits across the world who work for changes in the political, economic, social and legal systems and structures that contribute to trafficking in persons. 

*While neither group accepts individual donations, look for the Freedom Fund’s grantees and GAATW’s members online to donate to them directly.  The best part is that these organizations have been pre-vetted. 

National

Freedom Network USA is the U.S.’s largest coalition working to ensure that trafficked persons have access to justice, safety, and opportunity using a rights-based approach. 

State/Local

Find a Freedom Network member in your state to make a donation. You can rest assured that these organizations promote a holistic, rights-based, and survivor-centered approach. 

Check out our posts Making the Most of Your Monetary Donations and What Is A Nonprofit to increase your impact when you donate.

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Learn more in our How To Be An Everyday Activist guide.

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Originally published May 10, 2021.

Posts identify both fast actions that you can take in under five minutes and more time-intensive actions that deepen your engagement.  Our fast actions tend to be time-bound, as a result, some posts in the archive may contain expired links. Not to fret, we also recommend anytime actions that never go out of date.