 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen in the room and especially online To this press conference at the 48th annual meeting at the World Economic Forum I'm joined today by Senator Corker, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Gary Hugen CEO of International Justice Mission Monique Villa CEO of Thompson Reuters Foundation and And Last but not least John Sedinsky vice chairman of investors relation and business development at Blackstone So to get us started senator Corker You've been a champion of this global fund for a long time Could you share with us the history of its creation and the vision you had for it? Sure, I'm glad to be here with these other panelists who've done such an outstanding job in this arena But there are 40 million people estimated today that live in slavery Around the world most of them are in about 15 countries And we became aware of it actually through Gary who's done so much work in that regard Someone on our staff heard him speak our chief of staff who's actually here We had him in our office. We began You know reading materials we visited a project they had in the Philippines to see the kind of work that they had under way became aware of the magnitude of this and Just felt like there was a need to have a Global fund to deal with this much like the world community did with with HIV Through PEPFAR So we began writing legislation. It took some time to make it happen We want to have something that many many countries and philanthropists are involved in we've set something up Towards that end and the United States has made a contribution the United Kingdom has made a contribution other countries will follow Thank You Gary You've your path this you're passionate about this topic, but usually this topic is seen as something in the history books Why do we need this global fund more than ever? Well, I'm grateful for senator Corker's leadership and the leadership of the Prime Minister Theresa May and the other panelists in addressing this issue because I think most people would not get the History question correct About whether or not there is more people in slavery now than in any other time in history But that is the fact there's more people in slavery today than were extracted from Africa Over 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade. So the thing we just need to know is that the modern slavery Problem is still is massive. It's as brutal as it's ever been But it's more stoppable than it's ever been It's illegal everywhere now in the world. It is Everywhere in the world, but it's also concentrated itself in a few countries And so this ought to focus our global efforts and this is what has been missing over the last 20 well really 10 years There's been a proliferation of tremendous efforts and raising awareness to trying to address Modern-day slavery and human trafficking, but they've been completely uncoordinated efforts and the establishment of a central fund Which will not only have the capacity to address the problem on a global scale that actually will be commensurate with the scale of the Problem, but it will actually do it with discipline around a coordinated strategy And an accountability as to whether or not all those various efforts are actually being effective in Measurably reducing slavery. So this is a game-changing effort in that regard It really is modeled after the tremendous success of the global fund for HIV AIDS And I think a similar historic Transformation can take place in the world So Gary spoke about strategy Monique your foundation has had a lot of initiatives. Why do you think we need a cohesive strategy? Well, I mean the foundation regarding slavery because we we address other you know under reported and very important issues like women's rights and and and Human impact of climate change, but slavery is since 2012 one of the core thing at the foundation and we have started to shed light on the issue through journalism So everything that our 48 staff journalists at the foundation right is distributed on the Reuters wise so it has a global audience and We have started to to really shed light on the issues of journalism and journalism of slavery Slavery is today outlawed in every country in the world and then as Gary has said It's still growing and we have more slaves than ever. So universally it is a board and Globally, it is growing. So there is something that we don't do right and So we shed light on the issue in order that people take interest and then we also take action. So we started by Creating a bankers alliance in the US with Cyrus Vance to look at the credit card data to ask the banks To look at the credit card data of their clients and see when there is a pattern of human trafficking So with the best NGOs in the US we designed the red flags that they incorporated in their Software in order to see when the red flags flash and they can share with law enforcement And Cyrus said that it it conducted to a lot more Suspicious reports from the banks. We did the same bankers alliance in Europe and we are now doing it in Asia And the Wolfberg grant the group of banks, which are the 15 biggest banks in the world When we launched the European one last May Said to all banks in the world to adopt the tool kids that we were putting outside In order to fight slavery through data because you when you can prove that someone is a slaver Through data, you are much stronger than when you only prove it on the strengths of the person that has been abused So that's one the second one has been to really interest Corporation to the issue because you have 40 million slaves today according to ILO probably a lot more But data is not right and we have a big hole there And we try to to to address also that issue But on the 14 million slaves you have 30% in sex trafficking and 70% in In forced labor so forced labor it is children 25% of the slaves in the world are children children or adults who work at no pay and are treated as a commodity by corporations and Unfortunately because the waste has outsourced a lot of their production in 40 years ago Without paying enough attention to their supply chain and what happens down down down the supply chain This has a load forced labor to flourish so now Corporation because the laws were voted in California in the UK now in France soon in Australia, etc Have to pay attention to the issue of the supply chain and so companies can be a force for good if they really start To pay attention to this issue and some have really started so we created two years ago the stop slavery award Which is an Anish Kapoor Statue that we give to corporations which are best in class to try to clean the supply chain from forced labor and The first year you had Candidates like Apple like test score like, you know, they have to self-nominate themselves and answer a very long questionnaire You let Packard wanted an XP semiconductors But this year it was consumers brands will want it and it was Adidas overall winner Intel CNA retailer a Corp in the UK, etc So more and more consumer brands are really paying attention to the issue and do the right things which is really important and Finally, we're going to we have just launched with Humanity United, which is an NGO which works a lot on slavery the ranking of the 300 Biggest company in the world on what they do for forced labor in order of that many Don't feel they have to do something because they are in another country where a law doesn't exist on that maybe should pay attention and last last thing I want to say is that a Journalism is not dead investigative journalism is not dead most of the candidates who were candidates for the stop slavery world where We're starting to really pay attention to what happens in the supply chain from the moment where media Showed that they have that problem either in their production line like line like Apple at some point or Or in their own supply chain and then they paid attention and immediately started to fight back on forced labor So it's it's very interesting that Media attention can also lead to good things so John Monique talked about the power that business have that they can be a source of good as The voice of business on this panel. Can you let us know how or even why business get involved in this global fund? Thank you. There there's probably Three or four different legs on this table in terms of answering this First of all, we have the international investor community And increasingly particularly sovereign wealth funds And particularly the larger ones not only in the United States For example, the state of California, but also in the Nordic region are very focused on ethical investing So they are very much looking at a broad set of ethical issues and now with this Announcement and with other announcements We're basically shining a bright light on this whole issue of modern slavery as it relates to supply chain transparency So it will become an investor issue secondly Remember the fish rots from the head and what that means is Corporations have to demonstrate leadership at the chairman and CEO level and at the board level With respect to this important ethical issue It's a moral issue and we're we're living in an age of increasingly moral disorder And this is the most visible example of where companies Around the world in their supply chain are employing people Seemingly employing them. They're not paying them Incarcerating them. I can give you lots of examples where on the ground we have filmed slaves in a mine Sent that film to a chairman or chief executive They denied that was their employees and I subsequently had to prove to them with the video That that was their Mine where they were employing People and not paying them So there is a need in this environment to have corporations in terms of Bring the discussion into the boardroom bring the discussion on the front page of the annual report Bring the discussion to a point where companies Develop best practices on how to deal with this issue in their supply chain The UK has been leadership. It's in this area with the modern slavery act And there's no question that companies around the world Will be able to share best practices With the global fund as to what they're doing to remove Modern slavery from their supply chain. This will take a long time This is not something that's going to be solved in one or two years But we need to get Going and lastly I would say Given we're in the age of social media Investors have power boards now need to take responsibility among their stakeholders, but ultimately the consumer Particularly has power in this age of social media to be much more assertive with their companies As to how they feel about brands that are not taking this issue seriously So I applaud the global fund and I know the global fund will become an important partner and Companies will become partners of the global fund both financially and in terms of sharing best practices as well as How they plan to eliminate Modern slavery from their own supply chain over the next decade Thank you before I open the floor for any questions I'd like to provide you all an opportunity to add to any of the comments made by your fellow panelists. I Would just add to to the comments that were made to to look at this And to try to deal with it in a manner that you measure the results I think is very important so much We see so many efforts where that is not the case I know as a chairman of the form relations committee for instance As it related to dealing with HIV around the world We had to really focus on making sure that we looked at cases and the amount of treatments that were taking place And we didn't lose sight of what our goal was and so the same is true here And so one of the things for those people who might be investing in these kind of things Whether it's the United Kingdom or the United States Which by the way, there is a 501c3 set up much like the national endowment for democracy That will have board members from all around the world that will be leading this effort But to make sure that that investment is yielding results is very very important And so as Gary mentioned there's metrics Going in and figuring out how much slavery is actually occurring in a place before you began and then Showing that you're actually deriving results. So this will be an effort again. It's a true public-private partnership Led currently by two countries other countries will follow will have private sector involvement And we really want to leverage our funds and build momentum around again achieving results So I'm indebted to the people here involved that have been and let me mention one other thing They're there you come here to the world economic forum and you realize there are Efforts that are taking place that are not coordinated People are not necessarily taking advantage of the best practices that another organization may have in place I mean just sitting here listening to the panelists you can see that they're involved in differing ways But to be able to have an entity that's using those best practices and helping others do the same I think it will be very very important in achieving the goal. We've all set out to accomplish Just following on what senator Corker has shared This is the game-changing development over just the last five or six years as we've now developed tools by which you can actually draw prevalence levels of forced labor and slavery sex trafficking within a jurisdiction Imagine as the senator mentioned to try to fight HIV AIDS if you didn't know how much there was and whether or not various Interventions were actually reducing the the prevalence level. This is now possible So it's no longer an excuse to say well this we just don't know what works and what does not there are means by which we can actually Test and measure what's working? And so now it will be about Investing in those methodologies that are proven to be effective the second game changer here is that the The commercial sector has a huge influence on addressing the utter impunity that exists in many of the emerging market countries in terms of forced labor Where the laws are there, but just simply not enforced and now corporate sector can step up and say we love helping Grow the economy here, but we're facing tremendous Reputational exposure from the possibility of forced labor in our supply chain and to go to those governments and to say it would be Indispensable to us if you the local government would actually enforce your laws against slavery So we're not swimming in this ocean of impunity when Corporations start to begin to raise their voice in that way. We are finding that these are the voices that the Local authorities especially in emerging market countries care about the most and so this is also going to be a a game changing Role that the private sector is going to have in this fight Yeah, if I just can add to all that is that the real impact Comes really from the cross-sector collaboration, you know when when companies started to to fight slavery in the cocoa industry in In ivory coast they joined forces together to to address the issue when now we Corporations tried to address the issue of slavery in the fishing industry in Thailand or in the Philippine And they work together To to to address the issue because alone a corporation cannot do a lot so when you have this this Cross-sector collaboration and shared expertise that as you say with business with government and with civil society Working together then you have really a force and this is what we we start to see coming And this is what we we I think we all around this table and I know Jean Bader Schneider at the global fund Really try to push this collaboration without which nothing will happen And all the laws that are voted are very good They don't have a lot of teeth at this stage because it's just a question of declaring what you do To address the issue of forced labor but one day they may have teeth and then you know Corporation will really have to address the issue. So collaboration for much bigger impact is crucial. I Think the other thing it's worth saying because this is not a simple problem There are really three big legs on a very big table, which is the whole issue of prevention Which is a very big discussion the issue of rescuing and then thirdly the issue of rehabilitating Survivors and all three of these are in itself Three separate very deep and broad areas, which you have to remember There are lots of examples around the world where from a poverty point of view if you can deal with job creation Locally and deal with poverty locally the likelihood of that you're going to have a high focus of preventing Trafficking is is very likely The issue of rescuing and more over the issue of rehabilitation of survivors is Very important and there's a lot more work to be done on this Thank you. I'm now going to open the floor for one or two questions if we have any Please state your name and your organization We've a moment for the newspaper to stun out in Brussels in Belgium How much money is being invested in the fund by whom and how will it be spent? The goal is to raise 1.5 billion and Thus far the United Kingdom has put 25 million in the United States has put 25 million in we'd like to to leverage an overall investment by the United States over a seven-year period of 250 million with 500 million coming from from other countries and then have that matched with 750 excuse me It's a 1.25 million dollar 1.5 million Billion dollar investment. We'd like to have the the 250 matched with 500 coming from other countries and 750 million coming from the private sector and so This in the areas that the fund works in the areas that the fund allocates money What we'd like to see happen is a 50% reduction in slavery in those areas to prove that what we're doing is Effective and shows results and then grow the fund from there that it's a problem of of jurisdictions of laws not being Properly Excluded so how are you going to do that? Yeah, so I'll let Gary speak more fully to this But going in and working with law local law enforcement working with prosecutors Changing the culture of the police department themselves making sure that That on the back end after victims have been rescued There's there's a there's a safety net to allow them to come back into society in a real way But it takes resources to do that. It takes teams of people Going into these countries again in every country in the world slavery is against the law But going in and causing we saw for instance I won't mention which jurisdiction but we saw were just a a few policemen at the top of a particular department Changing the way they went about dealing with this changed the entire department because before that You can imagine the corruption the graph that was taking place to allow to cause people to turn their heads away from this blight on society a Few years a few years ago the Gates Foundation invested five million dollars in a project to try to reduce Child sex trafficking in the city of Cebu in the Philippines and the goal was to have that reduced by 20% Over that five-year period of time I jam partnered with them in standing up local law enforcement to address this and when the outside Auditors came back to measure the effectiveness of that they found a 79% reduction in child sex trafficking that was then replicated in the city of Manila and in the city of Pampanga in the Philippines And they produced 76 and 86 percent reductions in child sex trafficking so it shows it's actually possible to invest in Building local capacity to bring great effective law enforcement and great survivor services And you can now measure the way slavery collapses when there's the risk of actually going to jail for it And when survivors believe they actually have a future This is the vaccine that actually exists in the world now for getting rid of slavery But like all other sort of global efforts It's going to take resources commensurate to the problem as the senator pointed out. It's a hundred and fifty billion dollar profit annually according to the ILO and it seems rather modest for the world to pony up 1.5 billion to take on that fight If I may have one of the big big difficulty in the fight against trafficking is the lack of Prosecution is the total impunity that slavers and joy all around the world so we fight a very organized crime in a Pretty disorganized manner. So the global fund and whatever Means can be given to justice around the world, etc. Will be important, but we have to realize that You know slavery exist only because of corruption Corruption is degrees of slavery everywhere at every level from the policeman or the police woman That you that you pay to to judges which are not doing their job, etc Corruption is the big issue behind this very organized crime. So it will not be that simple But it's true that to have means instead of not having no means in the fight will change things obviously So we have one more question. Yes. I'm actually from the World Economic Forum. Gary Schmidt. Sorry Mr. Sotinski, you mentioned social media as a way for consumers to to pressure private sector players to To hold up the standards. I like to hear from you But also from the other panelists what role technology can play in this in this fight against slavery. Thank you Thank you. That's a very good question. I had lunch today with a very prominent fashion designer and This is someone who's an activist and this is someone who's very interested in the subject and This person said to me categorically. There's no question that People buying their brands will ask the question very soon Is there slavery in this garment? It's not a question of whether it's made in China or the United States or in the UK Or whether it's made out of cotton linen silk or rayon. The issue is has a modern slave Made this garment and one of the things I often say And I've often Introduced the term ethical profit, which is we should be interested in profit. That's been entirely ethically Arrived at rather than the maximized profit and the ethical profit is a profit Which is someone can look their consumer straight in the face and say we understand our supply chain and there are no slaves that manufactured this t-shirt and consumers can Text they can put things on Twitter and they can when they when they come across a brand that they think has dubious origins I often think something that is very inexpensive has to be challenged. I don't want to make any generalizations That's unfair, but something that's very inexpensive. You have to challenge the origins of it where it's made how it's made and the supply chain and and if a company actually says to you well, we don't entirely know all Aspects of our applied chain. That's not sufficient companies have got to take full Responsibility for every aspect of their supply chain Otherwise the consumer has a right to raise a lot of questions On that issue because this is something that we want to address with the stop slavery award because indeed you receive an award Because you have done the right things to try to to eradicate false labor from your supply chain But you will notice that the big consumers brand that received this award this year Have not made big campaign on that and the thing is that the mentality are not yet ready And it's a very interesting discussion where consumers should have a role to play and I hope they will play it it doesn't seem that Companies are ready to to Advertise on the fact that they have clean supply chain because they think that you know, maybe the consumer Doesn't want to feel guilty when you buy something So I mean this notion of the consumer feeling guilty it's quite interesting to think of and Quite interesting to push because I think that consumer would feel guilty if they knew that there were slaves in the supply chain But would certainly feel much better if they knew that in this brand there is no slaves And it's clean so it's an interesting discussion that will be the one in the in the next months and years and Social media and technology can play a role one of the things that's quite amusing is a number of chief executives in the last 12 months a Lot to do with as a result of the work that gene is done Monique is done and other sort of activists in this area a lot of chief executives I said well, we actually believe we don't have any slavery in our supply chain and of course as you know today That is a red flag to the media and the media will go out of their way to try to prove them wrong and I would say now every chief executive who's said this is not an issue for us has regretted it Some of them have been publicly embarrassed because they have had to pull in their tail and say whoops We actually Went a little too far in the statement. So What we're now seeing certainly in the UK under the modern slavery act is everyone is very cautious Wants to do their homework wants to understand all aspects of their supply chain Before they go too far and I think most people know they have slavery somewhere in their supply chain it's a question of how to deal with it proactively and being very candid about how transparent they can be and Focus on it's almost like asking a company to reinstate their Their values and their their set of ethics in terms of how they actually do their business how they do their core business So on that statement, I would like to thank my panelists for taking the time to explain this important issue and Discussing the ways that it can be resolved and that there is an optimistic option for that and that we should be Galvanized to join that cause and I would like to thank everyone in the room and online. Thank you