Stolen Lives, Stolen Money: The Price of Modern-Day Slavery

The 13th High-level Alliance against Trafficking in Persons conference “Stolen Lives, Stolen Money: The Price of Modern-Day Slavery” aims to shed light on a range of financial, social and legal factors surrounding the ongoing debate on globalization, migration, inequality and trafficking.

The conference will explore the nexus between trafficking in human beings and salient aspects of the current debate on globalization, including the interconnection between human trafficking and inequalities, importantly those linked with migration, as well as the increasing use of unpaid work to foster the illicit accumulation of wealth, which is at the core of contemporary slavery.

The conference will subsequently highlight the economic, social and political costs of modern-day slavery both in terms of the violation of human rights and dignity of trafficked persons, and in terms of disruption of healthy and legitimate businesses, massive tax evasion, corruption, and erosion of the rule of law.

Finally, the conference will explore how the approach of global justice can contribute to defining a comprehensive strategy to tackle trafficking in human beings as an increasingly structural component of our societies and economies, to promote the rule of law and a fairer distribution of resources at the national and international levels, and to identify a range of actions aimed at ensuring legal and economic empowerment, restitution, and compensation to trafficked and exploited persons.