Previous Forums

The 2022/2023 North American and European Regional Forum theme this year is: “Enabling local engagement and global synergies to address modern slavery.” This Forum will focus on a range of critical topics connected to sex trafficking and labor trafficking, including recent trends and prevention strategies.

The Forum is a living embodiment of the anti-human trafficking and anti-slavery movement, bringing together individuals and groups whose work may not otherwise intersect. The Forum recognizes that the movement itself is only as strong as its members, and one of the essential pillars of the Forum is to convene voices from a plethora of different backgrounds. The Forum has taken great care to increase access and infuse democratization at its very core and, by extension, the movement itself. These notions are the foundation of the reinvention of the 2021 Forum format.

Anti-slavery movement leaders virtually convened via Zoom for 3 days at the second regional Freedom from Slavery Forum-Asia to discuss issues most pertinent to the continent and set priorities for the next year around the theme of “Resilience and Resistance to Modern Slavery: Key Priorities for Asia.”

Anti-slavery movement leaders virtually convened via Zoom for 3 days during the third regional Freedom from Slavery Forum to discuss issues most pertinent to Latin America and set priorities for the next year. This year’s theme was “Resilience and Resistance to Human Trafficking: Key Priorities for Latin America.”

The 2020 Forum featured 27 presenters from governments, multilateral institutions, academia, foundations, and civil society organizations. The diverse panels included representatives from organizations in Australia, Canada, France, Ghana, Kenya, India, Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The virtual events were free to attend and open to everyone in the anti-slavery movement. Across the four days, 554 individuals registered and 285 individuals from 33 countries participated (including presenters).

The 2018 Freedom from Slavery Forum took place in Bangkok, Thailand from December 3-5, 2018. This iteration of the Forum, the sixth annual, built off the work and goals of years past by bringing leaders from the anti-slavery field together to coalesce, create partnerships, discuss promising practices, and develop a shared agenda for action.

The Freedom from Slavery Forum was designed to provide a place for leaders of the global anti-human trafficking and anti-slavery movement to come together, share and discuss best practices and lessons learned, identify gaps in the field, brainstorm new ideas, and build relationships with one another. Additionally, the Forum is meant to educate the public about this issue.

The 2014 Freedom from Slavery Forum was designed to facilitate open dialogue among the leaders of anti-slavery organizations, as well as to educate the interested general public about efforts to combat modern-day slavery. Accordingly, the Forum consisted of two major components – an off-the-record meeting of organizational leaders and a public forum where community members could engage with leaders in the anti-slavery movement.