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Human trafficking generates more than $150 billion annually and is a significant source of funding for every nation and movement threatening the stability and security of our world today. Human trafficking is unique among human rights abuses because local and regional escalation not only exploits and enslaves millions of people in labor trafficking, sex trafficking, organ harvesting, forced marriage and other forms of modern slavery, but it also funds and exacerbates global violence, including terrorism, armed conflicts, religious persecution, gender apartheid, and environmental degradation. The Interparliamentary Taskforce on Human Trafficking (ITHT) is the first platform of this kind to convene legislators, decision-makers and leaders from around the world focused on a single mission of stopping human trafficking through policy solutions and Parliamentary awareness. Increased Parliamentarian awareness and legislative engagement to stop human trafficking is critical to creating widespread systemic change. Our belief is that through collaboration we can accomplish more.

Human trafficking is a borderless crime, and ITHT fosters necessary international collaboration. Traffickers are organized, and therefore, our response must be organized as well. We provide the necessary platform for collaboration, information sharing, and collective action among legislators and key decision makers.

Lawmakers play a critical role in the fight against one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time: human trafficking. One of the most critical gaps in the fight against human trafficking is the cultivation of legislators who are dedicated to championing anti-trafficking laws and policies. William Wilberforce’s name is synonymous with the 18th century abolition movement that put an end to the transatlantic slave trade. But the movement was not a one-man campaign: it was a public awareness crusade that leveraged arresting images of human suffering; it was a community mobilization effort that captured and quantified public opinion through grassroots petitions; and it was a series of massive, market-shifting boycotts. At its tipping point, the abolition movement was a Parliamentary campaign. Wilberforce raised up a generation of legislators who championed the human dignity of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and, through their legislative leadership and innovation, the UK adopted the pivotal anti-slavery laws that institutionalized abolition and changed the course of history.

Today, many lawmakers support the anti-trafficking movement, but few champion the cause or dedicate even a brief season of their legislative careers to prioritizing this. Therefore, legislators often miss the chance to spur a 21st century tipping point, to institutionalize abolition and change the course of history again, at a time when interconnected global and local markets depend even more grossly on the slave labor of children, men, and women. Therefore, our goals are to:

1. Increase the number of legislators globally who prioritize anti-trafficking legislation as a primary focus.

2. Collaborate effectively on new public policy, and share effective anti-trafficking model legislation from throughout the world.

3. Educate lawmakers globally on human trafficking.