Events

Event summary:

On 30 January 2025 we had the privilege of hosting Ghada Waly, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Director General of the United Nations Office in Vienna. We were particularly pleased to welcome once more former UK Prime Minister Baroness Theresa May, Chairperson of the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, as one of our distinguished attendees.

The Director General’s keynote speech focused on the pressing and neglected issue of human trafficking and modern slavery.  Ms Waly particularly emphasized how patterns of exploitation are currently changing and expanding, thus moving beyond forced labour within supply chains. Increasingly more common forms of human trafficking and modern slavery include forced sexual exploitation, forced criminality and child soldiering. The Director General also spoke about the centrality of social networks in co-opting victims, as well as the pivotal role played by loose labour regulations in “Special Economic Zones” (SEZs) in facilitating exploitation. Ms Waly concluded her talk by stressing the importance of the UN’s strategic and coordinating role in global responses and preventive actions against human trafficking, the need to empower survivors as advocates of more effective anti-trafficking legislation, and the critical role of academia in the evaluation and improvement of these policies.

Former Secretary for International Development Andrew Mitchell responded to the keynote, calling for the need to fundamentally update the UN system to meet the global challenge of modern slavery and human trafficking, and stressing how the current rise of populism, and the consequent dismantlement of international development aid, has contributed to exacerbating this issue. A second intervention came from sociologist and former Nuffield scholar Dr Zora Hauser of Cambridge University, who emphasized the need to understand human trafficking as a criminal market where criminal organizations act as the chief mediators between the supply of exploited individuals and the demand for cheap goods, sexual services and organs from consumers. Only this understanding, Dr Hauser insisted, can allow for effective tackling and eradication of human trafficking.

We are indebted to Professor Andrew Thompson and Professor Desmond King for having organized the event and moderated the panel discussion.