North America and Europe Regional Forum

Resources

Since 2014 the annual Global and Regional Freedom from Slavery Fora have created a space to coalesce on trends and key issues within the anti-slavery movement. The 2022/2023 North American and European Regional Forum theme was: “Enabling local engagement and global synergies to address modern slavery.” This Forum focused on a range of critical topics connected to sex trafficking and labor trafficking, including recent trends and prevention strategies. Throughout the discussions, participants were invited to discuss how to build genuine and impactful allyship.

This theme emphasizes the approach that energies created at the local level are a pathway to enhanced synergies on a global scale. Thus, the Regional Forum explored and defined key strategies for local engagements, identified the best approaches to revitalize the movement and increase resilience and resistance, and determined the ways in which these engagements may inform the global synergies.

Participants included community leaders, policymakers, survivors, faith leaders, labor leaders, academics, and other key actors at the grassroots level, and discussions focused on the development of strategic engagements on policies, data, practices, and behaviors, with the aim of strengthening the anti-slavery movement at the regional level.

Now more than ever, modern slavery is in the spotlight because of increased evidence base; awareness; philanthropic support, and regulatory developments. This momentum offers an opportunity to strengthen our movement in Europe and North America.

Stakeholders came together in Toronto, Canada, from October 25 to 27, 2022, to discuss:

• How to strengthen allyship and the movement to be more strategic and inclusive, with solidarity and equity at the core;
• Modern slavery trends that offer critical opportunities to advance the movement;
• Strategies to ensure anti-human trafficking and forced labor laws coming online globally are backed by strong implementation guidelines, ensure impact for survivors and lead to long-term change and reduction of human trafficking.

The two-day in-person and remote sessions provided a safe space to share insight and expertise to improve how we work and enhance collective impact in the movement to end human trafficking. In this series, the agenda and expected outcomes of the Forum were developed in consultation with survivors and other key local and regional partners. 

North America and Europe Forum Sponsors