Our CEO, Rochelle Keyhan, is honored to present an action item at the 2018 Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust Conference.

Trust Conference delegates take action and forge tangible commitments to empower women worldwide and to fight modern-day slavery. At each conference, inspiring and entrepreneurial thought leaders propose innovative solutions to address the conference themes. We call them Actions.

Her Action was livestreamed from the ceremony in London. Watch below.

The Problem: A siloed anti-trafficking field
There are passionate actors across the United States doing heroic work on the ground to make it harder for human traffickers to operate. Unfortunately, they often run into challenges when their work crosses jurisdictions. What does a sheriff’s department do when it’s investigating a local organised criminal network only to realise that the network has connections to another state? Often, they are forced to limit their investigation due to roadblocks in their ability to collaborate with law enforcement in other jurisdictions. When there are new investigative methods and best practices developed in one location and agency, how do other agencies learn from and collaborate with those innovators?

Traffickers greatly benefit from this lack of collaboration. They move freely within and across jurisdictions at the city, county, state and international levels, operating sophisticated networks while counting on local agencies to be too disconnected and under-resourced to do anything more than slightly inconvenience them occasionally. Fostering collaboration to tackle human trafficking is what Collective Liberty is working to solve.

The Action: Mobilising local heroes to combat human trafficking
Collective Liberty has experience facilitating collaboration across agencies which has led to successful cases being built across jurisdictions. In the United States, Creative Liberty is creating a trusted national network to connect dedicated anti-human trafficking actors to each other to share resources, and build on best practices.

Scaling up our work internationally and bringing everyone together on a secure digital platform is the next step in the evolution of this work. Globally officers and NGOs will be able to login and find the right support for their specific victim/ case they are working on, find the right language skills, social service or legal support. They will access connections to other agencies who overlap with their case, find collaborative tools, resources, and best practices, in real time with this platform, they will be able to find exactly what they need – including the ability to request training, attend webinars, and locate contacts and ideal partners.

What help is needed

  • Individuals and organisations globally working at the local and national level to join our network of first responders to share best practices and collaborate on investigations
  • Pro-bono tech and legal support to help us develop a secure digital platform in compliance with trusted cyber security best practices to protect the information shared in the platform
  • Financial support to help us strengthen and scale our work globally