 Hi everyone. How are you? Good. Excellent. My name is Maya Roy. I am from Canada. I am the CEO of YWCA Canada. So we're a women's NGO and we work with women and girls. And one of the things that we do is we work with survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. I would like to welcome all of you here today, both in our audience and also watching the live stream for our open forum on ending modern slavery. We have a very distinguished panel here with us this afternoon who I will be introducing shortly. So with us here we have Dr. James Cacain. He comes to us from the UN University where he works. He's a director of policy research. We have over here sitting Sophie Ociende who comes to us from a number of grassroots organizations based in Kenya. She is an advocate who does a lot of work on the ground and she will be telling us a little bit about her work. Here we have Nina Shala. She is a global shaper and also a professor of law in Kosovo. And here last but not least we have Sir Wayne Wright who comes to us from law enforcement. So welcome. I'll have actually each of you as we start to tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your work. One of the things that I think we're very much interested in exploring today as we're here in Davos is what does it mean for different stakeholders to actually address and end modern slavery. So when we're talking about modern slavery there's different ways of defining it. And I very much like for each of our panelists to actually bring your individual expertise and what you've seen on the ground. What works. What what doesn't work. And what are some of the challenges and the solutions that you're seeing on a day to day basis. Another thing that we'll be doing here today is actually exploring as an audience what does collective action look like. How can we make change as community members whether we're students whether we're parents and whether we are policymakers. So I think we're in for an exciting and dynamic 90 minutes looking forward to having an open discussion between the panel and then we'll also have some time for audience questions and answers in in the last in the last half hour of the panel. So does that sound good. Good. All right. One of the things that I wanted to do is actually get the audience a little bit involved and actually talk a little bit about. You know when we're talking about modern slavery what does that mean. What does that look like. So the ILO what they estimate as we saw in the video earlier that there's anywhere upwards of 40 million people on any given day who are either engaged in forced labor or who have experienced forced marriage. So to take us through some of those stats I'd actually like for us to do a little bit of an exercise and you're going to help me. So don't worry it's very easy. All you have to do is stand up. So if I could please ask the audience to stand up. You can help me as well. Yes. Thank you. I know this is I promise this is there's only two audience participation moments but they're very very easy. So we have four people here on the panel and we have about 8 to 10 in each audience row for every four people I would like one person to sit down. So out of our panel here I would like one person to sit down and have it over here. Can you sort of look amongst yourselves and see within every four people have one sit down. I promise after this there's no more math. This is the last mathematical component. So thank you. So when we're talking about statistics for people who are actually engaged in forced labor forced marriage one in four of those people are actually children. So 25 percent. So keep that in mind as our panelists are talking about their about their experiences. I'd like everybody whether you're sitting or standing to put up both your hands and put your left hand behind your back. Thank you. So 50 percent of people in experiencing forced labor or marriage 50 percent of them are experiencing debt bondage. So what is debt bondage. We're actually going to find out. I would now like all of the women in the audience to sit down. So just a little exercise to demonstrate when we're talking about people actually experiencing this day to day and experiencing the impact and the abuse of power 70 percent of them are women and girls. So there's a very gendered aspect to this work that we're actually also going to be touching on. And you can also see how few people are still left standing from this huge audience here. And you can really get a sense of the scope of erasure that we see that happens with modern slavery. So when we're talking about modern slavery one of the things I'd like for you to think about as an audience. It's very much about who has power. Who doesn't have power. And if they don't have that power who benefits from from that power imbalance that our four panelists are going to be speaking about. So thank you very much for bearing with me. Please have a seat. So I'm going to throw it over. We talked a little bit about the statistics. One of the things Dr. Cocaine that you have an expertise is is around mining big data and the importance of data to point us towards evidence based solutions around addressing addressing some of the issues we'll be talking about today. So over to you. Well thank you Myron. Thank you everybody for coming and being here today. It's a pleasure to be here with such a distinguished panel and with all of you to talk about how we can all go about ending modern slavery and what the role what role we all have in in achieving that. I'm so glad you started Maya with this exercise of giving people a sense of the scale of the problem and how it's distributed. So we saw a number at the beginning the ILO the International Labor Organization estimates that there are about 40 million people in modern slavery worldwide. So that's about one in every 185 to 200 people. I think there are roughly 250 maybe 300 people watching in this hall and in an adjacent room. If you think about that what that means and what we mean by modern slavery is that essentially we would treat one person or one and a half people out of all of you as though we owned you. So when everybody else leaves at the end of this lovely panel whether that person left would depend on whoever is exploiting them. What that person said for example. This is all about exploitation of vulnerable people. And I'm so glad Maya you started with this point about power. People may be vulnerable all over the world for a range of different reasons and we'll have a look in a minute at what we know about who is vulnerable and why. But I just wanted to start with that number one in 100 and every 185. If you think about the scale of the problem that's pretty significant. Now a few years ago every country on earth 193 countries agreed to take steps to try and bring that number to zero by the end of 2030. So just a little bit more mathematics. If we divide the 40 million by the number of days left between now and the end of 2030. It means we would need to reduce the number of people affected by 10000 every single day between now and the end of 2030. So you probably go to next ask me you're thinking well OK is that a big number is that a small number. How are we doing at the moment. I have the privilege of leading a project at the U.N. which tries to measure our progress towards that target and we've been doing this for several years. And I can say with fairly high confidence we're nowhere near that target of 10000. So we need all collectively to think about how we can rapidly scale up our efforts to reduce that number to a more manageable number or eventually to zero. So you might say to me well if the numbers are so big where are these people. Actually why don't we see them. And the answer there is that if we know where to look modern slavery is actually so present in our world that it is visible from space. So what you see here is a satellite image of two brick counts one at the top one at the bottom of the screen. These are giant ovens where people are held in debt bondage that my referred to which means that they may be being paid. But they're also they have incurred a debt for the privilege of working in the awful dusty hot dangerous conditions of carrying dirt and mud into a brick kiln and then staying there while it's baked into bricks. And this is quite prevalent still in South Asia for example. So what researchers have begun to do is recognize this distinctive pattern of the brick kiln what it looks like and train artificial intelligence to trawl across satellite imagery and then map the results. Because if we not every brick kiln is a site of debt bondage or modern slavery but you're much more likely to be in debt bondage or modern slavery if you work on a brick kiln than if you work in many other work sites. So finding the brick kilns improves our ability to bring resources and help to the people who are enslaved in those workplaces. And that same technique using artificial intelligence to examine satellite imagery is now being used to find sites of slavery in the Amazon where illegal deforestation leads to charcoal kilns. Those charcoal kilns make pig iron that is then used to make steel that goes for example into cars. So maybe some of the cars when you go out out the door maybe they've been manufactured in part with slavery. The same technique has found slavery in the strawberry fields of Greece where migrants from North Africa and the Middle East are being forced into labor to pick strawberries for European consumer markets. That's the reality of our global markets today that often right at the bottom of the supply chain of the value chain there are people who are being forced to take risks forced to labor in ways that they otherwise wouldn't want to. So let's go back up to the macro level where is the biggest problem. Well the best data we have is from the International Labor Organization and you see it here. And you'll notice it's at a regional level not at a country level because the best data we have the most rigorous that's available worldwide gives us regional outcomes. Now the highest rate of modern slavery is in Africa and Asia Pacific and that's why they're darkest. And by modern slavery here we mean forced labor including forced labor in the sex trade but also in other trades and forced marriage. If we take forced marriage out of the picture for a moment and focus only on the forced labor that's what the bubbles represent and you'll see there that the largest bubble is actually in the Asia Pacific. That's the picture for adults. What about for children who Maya helpfully emphasized at the beginning. Well this is the prevalence rate by region for children one hundred and fifty two million children are in child labor worldwide. Often in the same kinds of industries we talked about or for example in mining mica the glitter that goes into glittery car paint or indeed perhaps into some of your cosmetics. Let's go back to bricks and mortar for a second. If I can get the video to work what you're seeing here is a visualization of the growth of cities in the last few decades. You'll notice how much they grow particularly in Asia Pacific. In China in the last 40 years more people have moved to cities than live in cities in all of Europe. Now that rapid urbanization of course has a massive ecological footprint but it also has a significant modern slavery footprint because urbanization means construction and construction means demand for low skilled workers particularly men. So people are drawn to these jobs from the countryside or across borders and as a result they're very vulnerable along the way vulnerable to corrupt officials who are forcing them to pay bribes to cross borders corrupt labor brokers and criminal employers. So construction is 13 percent of the global economy but it's 18 percent of the world's modern slavery problem by the best estimates. Now urbanization is not all a bad story. If you move to a city your life expectancy improves in part because your income improves and probably your consumption improves. But in fact consumption also leads to new modern slavery risks. Let's have a look at an example of this. So this is a visualization of the global trade in fish. The fish trade is worth about one point four billion dollars worldwide. Every dot every single dot in this visualization is one million dollars of fish being traded. And you'll see again that's grown a lot in the last few decades in particular exports from the Asia Pacific. We now have about four point six million vessels fishing for us worldwide fishing for us. And I would emphasize fishing for our cats and dogs because often that fish for example goes into our pet food. Many of those people are fishing far away from the shore in very isolated harsh and dangerous conditions. Many of them are migrants. So in agriculture and fishing worldwide we see annually one point eight million cases of forced labor and modern slavery. So if you're eating seafood tonight or if you're feeding your animal pet food just have a think about where that came from and whether it's slavery free. Another good example is the palm oil trade. Many of you may not have heard of palm oil but it's actually very ubiquitous. It's a product used in everything these days from shampoo to chocolate. Although I don't know if it makes its way into Swiss chocolate. We have to ask some locals that palm oil trade has also grown. You see here significantly in the last few decades. Palm is grown on plantations where often children are employed and where we see many indications of modern slavery debt bondage forced labor. Indications such as people's passports being withheld so that they can't leave when they want to or their wages being withheld. Concerns about these violations recently led Norway's sovereign wealth fund its investment fund from the income it gets from petroleum and gas which is the largest such in the world. It's worth one trillion US dollars. It divested from 33 palm oil companies because of concerns about this kind of violation and also very soon after that US banks followed suit and divested from many of those companies as well. So what we see here is that modern slavery is in a sense like climate change and market failure. With climate change we are not correctly pricing our production because we're not taking into account the effects of that carbon on our lives and on the economy in the long term. There's a lot of discussion of that here in Davos this week. Same story with modern slavery. We're not correctly pricing these labor practices. We think that this that the costs fall all on the people at the bottom end of our supply chains. Not true. Recent UK government research suggests the cost in the UK just to the public purse is three hundred and thirty thousand pounds about four hundred thousand dollars give or take just the direct cost. So looking after these people prosecuting their exploiters health care. We're not even talking about the loss to the economy from the fact that during their exploitation these people aren't saving. They're not out on the high street purchasing genes like you or me. They're not participating as active agents. So the true cost to all of us is actually quite big. The UK government thinks they have about 13000 people in modern slavery in the UK. Three hundred and thirty thousand pounds per person. Immediately you see back to the maths I'm sorry to say. Very big numbers involved here that we're not pricing into the way we organise our production our consumption our investment and our lending. And that's why we all need to be thinking about what our role is when we're buying the pet food when we're putting our money in a pension fund. Where is that money being invested. Are we unwittingly supporting practices that lead to modern slavery and human trafficking. Wonderful. Thank you. That was an excellent presentation. I find it really interesting because usually as economists we we tend to think of things and in one or two variables. But what you're actually pointing out based on the data is we can't afford to not act. So as much as yes certain companies or consumers benefit from lower prices of goods from the so-called cost savings you're actually pointing out that that it's an expense we can't afford. That's right. That's right. We've heard a lot of talk here in Davos about what are the costs for business going to be if they have to deal with a carbon tax. What would the cost be if they had to really look down to the 13th or 14th tier of the supply chain and find these risky practices. That's the wrong question. The question we should be asking is what price are we paying now and what price will we pay in the future if we don't make that investment to address these issues before they arise. Wonderful. Thank you. So in terms of moving on in the theme of asking tough questions I was very pleased to be able to speak with Sophie Otiende who's done a lot of work as an advocate with heart which is awareness against human trafficking and she is also the incoming Africa region operations manager for Liberty Shared. Sophie when I went on the heart website yesterday I was very impressed with the level of research and resources and what really struck me was the toolkit that I saw around how to recognize modern slavery and trafficking on the ground in terms of your work and your experience. We started with the big picture the global statistics. What does it look like for you on the ground as an advocate. Thank you so much Maya. Thank you so much Dr. James. It's always interesting to hear those numbers from like a big level and then to think about like at my level those numbers actually mean faces. So when you say 40 million I can recognize different faces that I can attach to different industries. So I think for me the most important thing again and I'm glad you spoke about like the cost and for me it's always as a survivor as an advocate it always breaks my heart when I hear that the only way we can get people to care is once we start thinking about the money like who's losing money who's not who's losing money who's gaining money and it just shows how much we don't care for lack of a better word how much we don't care about like the human element of this because people are suffering lives are being lost. If you think about the trauma that people go through and we there is the money that businesses that the money that government lose but there is the pain of recovery which those of us in frontline work have to constantly deal with and I think for me it's to think about not just right now but to think about also historically. The truth is we live in a world which was built on people suffering and we've sort of come up with a system where for us to get better things there has to be a human cost they have there has to be people who pay a price and it's people lives have to be lost so that other people other people enjoy and for me that's so it's so unfortunate because the ethics of this at a human level is so sad. Someone a child in Africa has to die so that someone has a mobile phone. A child in Asia has to die so that you put on the next fancy dress so for me that's that's sad. At a grassroot level half the time when people talk again talk about like survivors and talk about like victims of trafficking there is this other where we see them as apart from us rather than one of us and I'm glad that you actually did that exercise because the people that suffer the people that pay the price are human beings they have the same desires to wake up in the morning and just take care of their families but what ends up happening is that someone is actually deceived and they end up in a situation that they are. For me human try we can't we can't talk about I can't emphasize that they we've created an ecosystem that basically requires the blood of people to be shed for us to survive so it's survival for the fittest you are talking about power it's a question of who's most powerful and they get to survive and the rest of everybody else gets to pay that price and literally pay that price you know die so that we can enjoy luxuries. I think then now I like that we are moving towards like looking at evidence looking at how we can fix this especially using data and asking ourselves how can I contribute how can I make a difference and all of us for trafficking for forced labor to end all of us the truth is in most cases you can tell people that this is not going to cost your price the truth is this will cost us our price all of us have to be a little bit less selfish for trafficking to end there is no other way to do it we have to be a bit less selfish than we've been operating for us to actually do it to actually get ahead it's an again trafficking doesn't exist independently of other issues when you look at the places that he's talking about Africa Southeast Asia we all know some of the issues that are there you're talking about gender based places where gender-based violence is prevalent so you can't fix human trafficking without thinking about issues like gender-based violence 90% of the victims that I take care of survivors that I take care of are survivors of child sexual exploitation and are survivors of gender-based violence you can't talk about trafficking and talk and not talk about land rights the companies that are basically working on plantations and everything where did they get that land from who's losing that land why are they losing that land so we can't talk about trafficking and not talk about land rights you can't talk about trafficking and not talk about as you say not talk about money where's the money going where the banks who's holding on that when how is that money flowing within the market you can't talk about trafficking and not talk about obvious inequality like in the system so the truth is if we are to deal and that's the reason why trafficking is so hard it's so complex is that it's connected to so many other issues and even on the ground if I when I work with a survivor I will have to think about if a woman who's lost her land because basically the family of their husband thought she wasn't good enough to inherit land I'll have to think about the fact that she has five children and we live in a probably she lives in a country that doesn't offer social protection so she doesn't have healthcare so I would have to fix that so it's looking at the whole the broad picture and the broad picture includes all of us so I really appreciate Sophie how you're bringing in that intersectional analysis and giving life to the data I once worked with a young woman who was being sexually exploited in traffic but her family had come from Bangladesh to Canada because of climate change and then was being pushed into a forced marriage and you could see how that structural poverty the migration falling through the cracks of the Canadian system and the immigration system how all of those layers added added on to what ended up to be just the gross human rights violations and doctor need a shot la you've had an impressive career as a lawyer and as an activist and a law professor and you've also worked as a prosecutor so it was very interesting for me when we were chatting earlier that you have also taken initiative on your own through the global shapers program to actually create a hub and actually look at some of the prevention pieces and education and life skills around supporting prevention work in in your country tell us a little bit more thanks Maya just one small clever I'm sorry not a professor lecture lecture I'm so sorry yeah I'm very optimistic today I have to say because I didn't expect that at Davos we on a topic on ending modern slavery would have an audience which actually consists I'd say 75% of youth this is amazing this means that you actually care I can tell because I was actually I'm my background is a bit I'm from I was born in Pristina and you know Pristina and Kosovo most certainly you've heard about the war and the Balkans so when I was 10 my family was forcefully deported from the country and I grew up in Tirana I had the chance actually to study in good universities to get a good education to work internationally to work in international organizations but I felt the necessity to go back to my country and to see if I can actually change things or improve something so you've heard most certainly about the the network of the global shapers and the global shapers is actually youth who once who is actively engaged to promote positive things or to address pressing issues in in our community in there in whichever communities they live so I returned back to Tirana as an advisor to the Minister of Interior I worked there for a year and noticed the huge problems of youth in in in the country I mean it's not Albania it's not just Kosovo it's Western Balkans in general so if you if one looks at the statistics there's around roughly 50 percent of the population is actually youth however around 25 percent of youth is inactive so it's out of the education system out of the employment system out of it's like out of the it's out of the specter of the data as well so what I felt that it I mean modern slavery we should I think that what we need to look at when we talk about modern slavery is actually to go to the root causes of it and if we see the root causes I mean modern slavery breeds on poverty breeds on discrimination breeds on persons without possibilities actually for to be part to be active citizens or to be part of a society so that's why I actually even that that's one of the reasons why I decided to found the global shakers community in Tirana and bring together young Albanians who were interested in discussion in discussing these hard topics because this is not a simple topic this is not something that can be solved very easily just like just like issues of unemployment just like issues of poverty just all like issues of inclusion and equality which for which we've been talking a lot over these days here so Dr. Cocay mentioned statistics about slaves in the UK just a couple of years ago the highest like the in the data of the slaves one of the highest numbers in terms of the nationalities of persons being prone to not falling from to modern slavery were actually Albanians it's something that touches me so that's why and that is our community as well and we very much and I believe that is very much linked to to to the main major problem of human trafficking that we have as a region I'd say not only Albania so that's why a way how I found a way to to to address the issue of trafficking of modern slavery especially in terms of Albania by by talking by talking to young people by trying to reform the education system in our country by understanding what are the the global movements what are what is happening at the global level we talked about I mean here at Davos we we've been talking about reskilling and upskilling and the necessity to be to be on top when it comes also with developments that technology is breaking so what I've been basically doing this last couple of months we've been actually holding trainings and holding discussions with kids in in schools and we still we don't have statistic data we don't know exactly how much we are really affecting or how much but I believe that starting from the bottom and working at the community level by raising awareness by increasing visibility about the phenomenon just by talking about it and by giving skills which maybe will be helpful to to to young people to get into the workforce can be actually a way to play a role in in in tackling such a huge problem it's really incredible how we're seeing the uses of AI and satellite technology survivor led activism you're using community development you know as a strategy all of these strategies peeling back some of the layers of what's a really complex issue I wanted to move to Sir Robert Wainwright he comes to us as a partner of the firm Deloitte but also has had a long career in law enforcement through your poll what were some of the challenges that you saw I think as a general public as a lay person we tend to think of these issues whether it's trafficking or exploitation through you know films like taken or what not what were some of the challenges that you saw on the ground and needed policies and interventions I think that the dimension that I saw through most part of my career was how organized crime is really cashed in on this trade and has become of course a major feature of the problem the growth of sophisticated organized crime syndicates in the way that they have professionalized the business of exploiting men women and children either for sexual exploitation or labor exploitation become big business you know you hear the numbers today and what's driving that in the main is greed from criminals that have made this a global business and you know so when I when I worked at Europola where I was the boss for nine years you know our job was really to try and mobilize the European law enforcement community in different areas we were also active in fighting terrorism cybercrime and so on in this area one of the dimensions that I noticed was it wasn't already an established priority it's not automatically a priority for governments or law enforcement is interesting unlike terrorism or cyber crime for example that's interesting because I've worked in I've looked at the dimension of modern slavery in different ways from from my work in law enforcement principally but also in wider government I worked with Theresa May when she was UK Prime Minister as a member of the Modern Slavery Task Force now as a Deloitte partner you know working every day with the executives and boards of global business to try and encourage them and help them move to more responsible business agenda across many different areas but also in in this area we talk about integrity of supply chains for example and also my my work with the global fund to end modern slavery where we're trying to raise globally one point five billion dollars so that we can put it to the kind of initiatives that we need in the part of the world that you've been hearing about from James and and others now I mentioned that sort of those different viewpoints because there is one commonality and I go back to this point about it's not an automatic priority that in each of those areas the political domain the business domain the law enforcement domain we have to work hard as a community to get this on to the onto the front page of their priorities they have many other things to do as well and that doesn't happen actually data helps us to to sell the case like James's the powerful stories that Sophie was was talking and many others are they speak about about it you know and when you hear about Nita story you know these are emotive stories that should mobilize anyone but actually in the end what makes the difference like in every other walk of life is leadership is where not there are the people in positions of of influence and authority that will stand up and be counted and change something do something about this and you know we had a modern slavery act in the UK which is imperfect but it's actually pretty good and has become a best practice model around the world principally because at that time we had a UK Prime Minister who was personally committed to this goal you have some business leaders about name them who are personally concerned and taking a stand and doing something to to clean up the supply chains for example when you have some law enforcement chiefs as well but they're few and far between and it doesn't happen without that leadership commitment and so as a community we've got a mobilized and help these leaders to stand up and and be the ones that that will change this forever and reach the goal that James is talking about the way so desperate need to get to by 2030 so when you are talking about that it hasn't been a priority that really struck me because I would think we have as as a global planet consensus around some basic ethics and morals and one of that being that slavery is bad and and that we should be doing something about it so just a question that I'd like to throw open to the whole panel what do you think is behind that lack of commitment is it a lack of political will is it lack of resources what are your thoughts should I jump in please well I think I think it's partly about emotional distance that we don't you know we look at that map and we think are the problems in Africa or Southeast Asia over there but it's not actually because number one there's modern slavery in every country on earth that's what the evidence tells us now number two the problems that we were just talking about in those countries are feeding our pets are feeding our supply chains are feeding the criminal organizations that traffic people from these other countries from Eastern Europe for exploitation in our own countries but we've created an ecosystem as Sophie so eloquently explained that allows us to keep our emotional distance it's partly because of the way the supply chain is organized it's broken up so that the lead firms the Walmart's and I don't want to single out Walmart but anybody who's a lead firm at the top of the supply chain doesn't have necessarily direct legal responsibility or command and control over the person at the bottom of the supply chain but equally is the consumer we feel a great emotional distance and I think Rob's point about leadership is really crucial here but we have to work to influence our authorized leaders but anybody can be a leader I was struck a couple of days ago I was talking to somebody in the Congress Center about the similarity between the climate debate and what we want to happen on modern slavery and that person said to me I wish we had a Greta a Greta Thunberg who is such a powerful communicator so disciplined and on message and it struck me that we do we do have the Gretas in this field it's people like Sophie and others who are communicating powerfully and eloquently about this so why are they not getting the air time that someone like Greta gets it's partly frankly because the media organizations and there are exceptions like CNN with its freedom project haven't taken an interest don't see a demand for these kinds of stories but it's also partly because all of us as consumers of those stories are not asking for more stories and not taking the trouble to go and learn the information as we are now beginning to frankly on climate so I think we all have a role to play here in that leadership you don't have to have authority to be a leader and Greta certainly is a paramount example of that what she's achieved in such a short time in communicating the importance of this issue is really staggering maybe there's a Greta apart from Sophie sitting in the audience or watching today but I really encourage you after this panel don't just go away and shake your head and maybe look roofily at your pet food tonight take the power in your own hands learn more about the issue think about how you can start advocating in the school for for slavery free supply chains with your bank is your bank really sure that it's not banking these criminal organizations that Rob mentioned with your pension fund I mentioned are they investing in firms that have slavery free supply chain we all have leadership potential yeah I think again as we've said this is sometimes I feel like this is not a priority because when we go especially when we go out to communities and we start discussing trafficking and people start thinking about how big of a problem it is and how overwhelming it can become when you think that and for me when I started think when I think about trafficking and I think about not just trafficking but going back to also the history of slavery itself because I think sometimes it's easy to talk about trafficking and forget about the fact that we are using the term trafficking is because slavery did exist in the first place so there's this as you're saying this idea of this being such a huge problem so that it becomes quite overwhelming for people to be able to dissect and ask what can I do as a person and what is my responsibility as an individual and I think that for us who are advocates and people working in this field is something we need to work on in terms of how do we communicate this huge problem in a way that people understand and can actually be able to pick out the things that they can be able to do in terms of do we need a greater arm out to be honest I'm an advocate for this issue one of the things I hate about the development world and how we've basically build again a system is this idea that we need to have heroes or we need to have tokens for people to actually listen especially when it's an issue that involves all of us because the truth is survivors and advocates and people who go through terrible things people like us who've gone through trauma basically constantly have to educate constantly have to teach people and it's exhausting to be honest it's extremely exhausting for victims and survivors of trafficking to honestly do this work because you constantly have to listen to stories that remind you of things that you didn't want to I don't believe in tokenism I think it's wrong to I think it doesn't help anybody because we build a single narrative around an issue we build a single narrative about what it's supposed to be and my problem is that single narratives don't help us they don't address the issue we need to understand that it's some complex issues we need to see different people speaking about it and Greta is amazing and I'm so glad that one of the things that she's actually also done is highlight some of the different people who were talking about climate change way before Greta and the truth is we built a system that also erases the work of activists that have done this work over the years when it comes to trafficking there's so many people that have been talking about this issue over and over again so also let's ask ourselves whose stories do we want to hear why do we want to hear stories from certain people and not from certain people why is the story appealing to you and when somebody else says it and not appealing to you and another person says it so for me for the media it's more of we don't need a single narrative we need multiple narratives about this issue because the world is made up of multiple people with multiple identities it's complex let's not be afraid of the complexity let's move ahead because it's possible to find out what your personal responsibility is and actually do something it can be overwhelming so let's not be afraid of how overwhelming it is but let's understand that there's simple things like right now just tweeting or writing a message about trafficking won't cost you anything but it could help someone being more keen the next time you travel so the next time you are at an airport and looking around you just lifting your head and actually looking at the people traveling with you won't cost you anything donating to an organization that deals with trafficking maybe even just when you think about something like five dollars or two dollars it's not much but it's a lot when you think about it in the context of what work is going to be done so it's it's simple we also need to understand that because we need heroes we've put such a high price in solving the problem because you think that your everyday actions are not heroic so you don't want to do something so for me if we build a system where we constantly expect heroes to come and rescue us or heroes to come and fix the problem what we're essentially also building is a case for bad situations that require heroes so we need to stop that you can be, as you've said James anybody here can be a hero and it doesn't take a lot it's really very simple and very easy to fix it so James and Sophie you're talking about sort of taking what can be a very overwhelming topic or set of statistics and actually breaking it down into actionable pieces whether it's sending out that tweet or self-educating yourself donating money to NGOs anybody on the panel, what are some solutions or concrete steps that you're seeing in your day to day work we have a lot of people watching on the live stream wonderful people who are also in the overflow room next door the audience here many people came here today on this sunny afternoon you could have done anything else you're busy people you chose to come to this panel so that we can all figure out solutions what are the panel's thoughts if we look at how many times the word modern slavery came up in English speaking papers online in 2005 it appears that it was mentioned only forty one times throughout the whole year in 2016 it had received more than six thousand mentioned so it came up in the so I think that there has been increased interest on the topic it needs more visibility it does and I think it definitely and connecting it to concrete history to your work, the work that you do, the stories that you told at the beginning it kind of relating it to specific cases makes it even more tangible for people to actually understand to understand it better I think in terms of you've seen also that in the business sphere I have the impression that there's still has I mean some steps have been taken in a way there are there are brands now that in their products it's mentioned that there's no forced labor involved so they have the the tech and that kind of mind it still is something I mean it won't it doesn't solve the whole issue but I think the more we talk about it the more panels we have about this topic the easier it will come or the more it will it will increase visibility it will increase awareness it will incite young people to discuss about it and maybe seek from their constituents about steps to be taken it will incite in that way government officials to take steps to solve the issue so I think it's still there's still there's steps to be taken I agree, Nita, because I think there's reason to be optimistic because listen the subject is clearly powerful enough to incite all of these actors and stakeholders that need to talk about it you can easily see how in the right circumstances this can become you know another thing as big as climate change and we have you know the young people that are here today that are capable of doing that we have modern social media technology means by which to do it as well you can easily see how this could ignite into a much bigger why the societal concern that matters because it then begins to to drive the the bottom line interests of politicians and business leaders because people are voters voters elect politicians people are also consumers of products and we're already seeing the results of some of that we you know that that was this year as well much more than many any years I can remember the responsible business agenda is is much higher whether it's climate or something else much higher people are more concerned about things like supply chain I think there are reasons to be optimistic and then when you dig into the possibilities that big business have to help on this of course they are unlimited take the finance sector you asked my specific question was working in the finance sector banking sector strong anti-money laundering controls working in a highly refined way I think they need some reform frankly but still they they are powerful regularly controlled mechanisms that monitor transactions banking transactions looking for signs of dirty money essentially exploitation of all the the gains of of criminal criminal work now these controls if driven in the right way and already we're beginning to see it is a very powerful way to track the course of the criminal flows from modern slavery and so with a small tweak of existing business controls on a global level already in play you suddenly begin to see quite a big impact in what really can work tracked down and as we do that as I've been doing in a lot of my career once we once you follow the money you find you identify the criminal organizations you hit them where they where it hurts the most for them and you start to cripple their business not alone will not end modern slavery but it will go a long way to helping and there are many many other examples like that in business in government where that can happen if we could just capitalise on the early signs of beginning to see that this is starting to take wind and mobilise and I absolutely agree with James and Sophie and others that there are a thousand gretas here today and on online just do something something that would make a difference ignite ignite the world around around this issue and that would make a real difference yeah I totally agree with you with that point Rob and I think there are two questions we can ask ourselves that will help stoke that fire just as in in climate we've begun asking ourselves number one what's my carbon footprint and number two what's my plan to reduce it and we ask those questions now business part of large topic of discussion here at Davos this week how do we identify carbon footprint and then what is the business's plan to reduce that carbon footprint we need to do the same with slavery footprint so actually one practical thing you as an individual can do is visit a website called slavery footprint and begin to find out what is your slavery footprint from the way that you live your life from the goods and services that you consume now that's a reasonably blunt tool you'll see it begin to give you an idea of how to do this but the more we ask ourselves what's my footprint or what's my school's footprint or what's my bank's footprint or what is my hospital's footprint the more we ask that question of those organisations the more they will be forced to start looking for good answers and we will improve our ability to find the problem and to price it in properly into our decision making then the second question is to ask those organisations to ask ourselves what's our plan for a transition and that's powerful because then we start moving from the individual acts just as individuals to systemic change if we want to get back to that ten thousand dollars ten thousand people a day that we're reducing the number affected by we're going to need individual actions but we are going to need systemic change as Rob's pointing to so I think we have to ask those two questions in tandem and that's how the fire will start to build wonderful so systemic change we also talked about we have here thousands of gratas or thousands of autumn peltiers and in that light I actually wanted to move to questions from our audience here today we have a lot of people and what do you see as some possible solutions or a question you'd like to direct to one of our panel members here if you could also introduce your name in which country that you're from so I apologise for pointing they're in the back one two three four so please sir in the back if you'd like to stand and we'll get a mic to you thank you very much I would like to apologise to the panel if I'm being a disturbance my name is Max I'm 16 I'm from around here so no I sit down just outside of the room of the most and my question would be sorry I'm sorry take your time have have it has the panel ever met a person of probably has met the people who have been in forced labour or sex trafficking what stories did these people tell to you personally so the sharing of stories and the importance of not having one story did anyone want to you want to start so I'm like I said I think probably you missed the first part of the introduction I'm a survivor of child domestic servitude and I work directly with victims of trafficking so we I have on a day-to-day basis I'm in conversation with people who've gone through this in terms of some of the stories and some of the things that they've gone they've gone through there's a lot of information online a lot of stories online there are a lot of survivors of modern slavery that are speaking out I will direct you to our hearts website you can also go to survivor alliance which is a great platform where survivors gather and have built a network to actually talk and most of them are actually in the movement doing a lot of good work so you can also go and check and look at some of the work that survivors are doing in the movement I hope that answers your question my name is Inge Kleinert I'm from Germany and I represent the association culture for peace and I must say I was very impressed but also very very distressed by what I've heard from the panel and lists have said and I get very depressed when I read that the weft has been around for 50 years with the ambition of improving the world but looking at the state of the world today it scares me because the gap between rich and poor has widened climate disasters are going from bad to worse and if anything has changed if there's been any change it's been for the worse we're increasingly afraid of war don't you agree with me that it is really high time for social movements the peace movement the climate activists movement or the human rights movement isn't it time for these movements to link up at global level if we cannot rely on the richest people in the world to do anything about all this I'm happy to take a stab yeah so ma'am thank you very much for this this excellent question I think it's important that we reflect on the challenges that we confront you explain them very clearly but it's also important that we reflect on what we've achieved as a as society globally in recent years we're all very very lucky to be alive today notwithstanding the difficult experiences that that some of us may have been through our life expectancies are the best that they've ever been in history conflict until recently was much less likely to happen than ever before we've lifted billions with a b of people out of poverty particularly in China in the last 20 or 30 years we we have terrible problems of income inequality of gender violence of structural discrimination but things are in many instances trending overall in a positive direction so I don't disagree with you there are tremendous challenges we have to deal with if we don't deal with modern slavery with climate this good news will not continue but there are reasons to be optimistic we have learned as a society how to regulate ourselves without going to war we have learned how to cooperate we have learned how to recognize that there are other stakeholders than just shareholders that the planet is a stakeholder in our political and economic systems we have a youth movement that has sprung up internationally that is saying it's not good enough to ignore the environment it's not good enough to plan for divestment from fossil fuels by 2050 because then we'll be out of control environmentally so there's a lot we have to deal with but I'm actually more glass half full than glass half empty can I just add something on that I think one of the things that you've actually mentioned is the intersectionality of issues and I didn't want that to be missed out that it's important for us to see how all this movement connects and I'll say that for me one of the issues that have constantly spoken about is the idea that especially for our movement we've for the longest time worked in a silo and movements are working in silos and it's important for us to come together and actually recognize that all oppression is connected all forms of violence abuse are connected and they come from one face and you've mentioned that and I think that is extremely important in our next wave of social movement and social change that we all come together and recognize that if one person is not okay then all of us shouldn't be okay so we should come together and basically put together our voices to address these issues so I totally agree with you in the idea that there's an intersectionality that has been missed out in the past and that moving on into the future that is something that we need to work towards. Do we have a question over here? Anita Farney from Switzerland. Luckily most of us are Swiss and we have very good access to our politicians on a local state or national level. I'd like to ask Mr. Wainwright what three questions we all should ask our politicians. Good. That's a good point. The first question I think is just to personalize what do you know about the problem of modern slavery in the world? We don't expect every politician to recite the numbers and statistics that James is showing but I'd like to know what do you know tell me something at least and secondly what do you think that the government to your government should be doing to stop it and thirdly perhaps most importantly what leadership role are Swiss politicians going to take also by influencing the agenda to future meetings of the World Economic Forum to go back to the point that our friend just made but also Switzerland has an enviable record for being a world leader and also a great convener of the international community so there is something here in Switzerland something very powerful that could happen at a political level. We have a question in the front row two in the front row and then we have two there. I first want to thank you for having the opportunity to listen to you because it's inspiring. I'm a journalist who has been working on this issue for six years and my goal is the eradication of slavery child labor and exploitation in coffee tea and cocoa because we have to start somewhere. Why not breakfast? I'm going to quote you. I'm a former political consultant and I used to come to Davos working for a little country in Asia called India and this country which I love very much because it gave me a great job and also taught me a lot of things and one of the things that taught me is that in India one of the secrets is that there are tens and tens of millions of children working and some people say 100 million and so if that number is true that would mean that the ILO figures are false but it looks like true because there are 700 million poor people and if you understand how child labor works then you come up with a number around 100 million but I'm here just to leave a suggestion because I think our goal here is basically to fix the problem not only to denounce it which you know most of us have done it but basically the solution is quite simple. Everybody in Switzerland knows what a Ferdinand Kinder is and everybody knows that today it's illegal but everybody knows that the state was supporting it. Well I hate to tell you this but Switzerland knows extremely well that 70% of all coffee is traded through Switzerland and Switzerland knows very well that there are millions of children tied to the supply chain of coffee and they also know very well that Reuters reported only in December, I worked with them on this issue, that there was slavery in the supply chain of Nestlé, Nespresso and Starbucks all three are Swiss companies because Starbucks is based in Los And the government didn't do anything about it even though it was Reuters which is a very serious news organization. The Washington Post just resupported a few weeks ago that there is more child labor and exploitation in certified cocoa than in non-certified but when we talk about child labor we are talking about children many of them have been bought they're not paid they buy them for $250 and $300 and they keep them for five years only feed them a bit like a Ferdinand Kinder and the difference is that they are not Swiss and they will never have rights and so my request is that we think about a solution and the solution is 10 cents per cup yes if we add a 10 cents per cup of coffee 10 cents per cup of tea 10 cents per candy bar and we can discuss all the products and we could actually pay the farmers in Nassan India Darjeeling or Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana or in Brazil enough so there would not be child labor there would not be slaves and we could actually monitor that there wouldn't be no exploitation and so this is all at the reach of the World Economic Forum because I think the CEO of Nestle is here I actually met with the CEO of any library just yesterday and I'm asking them all very simple issues why don't we create a new business model which is based on rule of law and that creates a transparent share value system that brings 10 cents per cup from the consumer to eradicate child labor slavery exploitation and that converts these exploited people in consumers of all these companies in the end thank you so much I'm sorry I took so long thank you so loving the tax and then we have a question thank you sir I wanted to respond very briefly actually also connecting this to the previous question about what can be done in in Switzerland right now in Switzerland there's a very important debate coming up on responsible business conduct of foreign operating entities operating in Switzerland if it's going on in parliament it will be coming up there may be a referendum there's a very important moment for political engagement by common citizens and by organizations nationally with exactly this agenda that you've just raised so thank you for raising it so we can all do something concrete from from today the gentleman in the front my name is Herman my name is Herman I'm from Heidi's home where we still have pretty good quality of life but don't think that everything is gold here either I'm interested in how mankind functions I would say that it's human and natural for people to be dissatisfied even when they're doing well we've discussed this in Switzerland over and over again we think that the future must be being better than everybody else having growth having better education always having more more more that's very much human nature we have not been able to control demographic growth that's a problem and in Africa the main issue in Africa I think is corruption so it's easy for China to come into Africa because the corruption is such you've pointed to some possible solutions and I was very interested to listen to what you've had to say and I can only say that I hope we'll be able to move forward from here thank you so the question of good governance first of all I think one of the things I'll say is again we need to move away from single narratives while I agree that corruption is a main issue in Africa it's not the whole story of Africa if you look at the issue of corruption in Africa there is a whole background around corruption around colonialism around what is happening and when you look at the media in Africa I'll talk about Kenya because I'm also not qualified to talk about Africa in general I can only speak about my country Kenya and when we've even spoken about corruption in Kenya and spoken about some of the systems that are around the people that benefit from corruption and all the things that are happening like in my country is the west so we you can't separate us you we simply can't separate the issue of corruption in Africa as being an Africa problem and that's oversimplifying it when all when all our resources all the resources in Africa are basically brought because of all these trade policies that are significantly unfair in some ways when the benefit at the end of the day is the west what is someone supposed to do on the other side so sometimes I think the overgeneralization of a complex issue to like a single narrative is dangerous while corruption all the money that most of the politicians actually steal from our people is kept in foreign accounts it's not kept within our country it's kept within it's kept within different accounts in Europe in other parts of the world where that money can't be touched where policy basically protects these corrupt leaders our our ministers and our government when they come for when when they're sick the reason why they're not they're not focused on building strong social protection system is because they can easily fly to Switzerland and to Europe and to any other country and get great medical cover while someone like me who basically wants to travel and talk about human trafficking will be stopped at every single border because I look a certain way so we can't again generalize the problems of Africa or the problems of a country like Kenya as corruption because I feel like sometimes we simplify things like some of the issues that Africa faces into these boxes so that we are disconnected from it I think this panel has been very great at actually showing how all of us are connected to the problems that Africa and Asia is facing and I feel like that needs to be the takeaway that we've built an ecosystem where each of you is involved in making each of us is involved in this world that is basically exploiting people while it manifests in Africa's corruption as poverty over here it manifests as demand for things as demand for a better life better things it manifests itself as racism for other people so we need to see that interconnectedness and move away from other thing and basically saying that you know if they fix this then it will be okay the truth is even if today and I and I even if today Kenyan stopped being corrupt let's say wishful thinking they stopped all our political leaders stopped being corrupt the trade policies the migration policies uh some of the things that basically and end up affecting our livelihoods would still exist and would still need to survive so for me while corruption is a main issue in Africa and I agree it's one of the contributing factors corruption exists and data has shown that corruption exists in an in an environment that actually promotes abuse and exists as a result of the fact that there are people with power and they abuse it and the truth is at the moment right now the people who benefit the most from the corruption that happens in Africa and Asia is not really Africans it is the worst so I think that goes back to our earlier I think that goes back to our earlier questions around who has power who doesn't and who benefits certainly the research shows that even with trade policies even with foreign aid that countries in the global south still send more resources go back to the west that for example me as a Canadian I benefit from the fact that for example mining companies are not following environmental regulations in Colombia I know for example many continental African countries still pay a colonial tax to the country of France and all of that has an impact economically James you wanted to comment and then we have our last two questions here in in the back yeah I want to build on what you've just said Myron this last question you know there was a premise in the question I think if I understood correctly so that we are going to continue to assume economic growth and the linear progress that we've become accustomed to in the west and I think that we're at a powerful and important moment of reflection here at Davos this week in asking ourselves do we want to continue living in the world that way it goes back to the point Sophie made earlier that we actually are recognizing now that we've achieved the system we have with the sensible wealth in Western Europe for example at a cost at a cost to the environment that is coming back to bite us at a cost to other people and I think we're looking now the question of modern slavery is and is a larger reflection on this question of are we going to take responsibility for those costs in their true in a truly comprehensive way are we going to price that in to the way we do business and the way we live and maybe that means that we don't assume ongoing economic growth at the at this expense that we actually look for a different model that's not necessarily about pure economic progress but it's actually about progress of a different kind that's about progress in the way we live with each other in the sustainability of ecosystems and the services they provide us even like a country like Bhutan measures gross national happiness because they recognize that economic growth is not the only or necessarily the best path to well-being I think there's a fundamental question for us to ask here about how we want to be and organize ourselves in the world wouldn't that be amazing if if we looked at gross national happiness the way we hear about the gross domestic product in the news and how we follow the stock market the two women who've been patiently waiting yes thank you Jeanette Bergen I'm from Norway and our sovereign wealth fund was mentioned which is one of the biggest funds of the world and there is one important point and one important reason why it's one of the funds of the world that has the best ethics and that is transparency transparency about where sovereign wealth funds where pension funds where banks are invested is crucial to solve the problems of the world and the challenges information empower people and empowers society and it creates competence that's why Norway is wary at the forefront of responsible business conduct and responsible investments I represent a pension fund we have excluded companies Ulam and Postal because they buy cotton from Uzbekistan we have excluded G4S from our investments because they are engaged in slavery and business in the in Qatar and other countries so I want to encourage you know all the people here and you on the panel as well to you know raise the hand for transparency because that's what empowers people thank you I'm a colleague of Jeanette I have a question to you Dr Cooke and very very to say is the improving potential for the multinational companies even if you know all of them have committed to the SDGs and suddenly everybody's talking about that there are business opportunities in responsible business conduct but still you know the implementation is quite far away from the commitments on the paper I'm afraid I missed a word where is the what there is the improving potential for them multinational companies when it comes to modern slavery well I think actually in a sense your colleague answered the question you know I go back to what I said earlier that the first question we have to ask ourselves is what is my slavery footprint and that's a question that many businesses are being required now to ask in some jurisdictions there's disclosure legislation in pace in the UK in Australia in Canada to some extent in France it's part of what's being discussed here in the Swiss parliament if we require whether as shareholders or as government regulators companies to ask what is my footprint that brings us to the whole question of transparency and empowering people who control the businesses to take the steps to to address them I just want to applaud the work of your pension fund to to focus on this issue and for anyone else in the audience watching or here who's in that sector there are ideas and examples of this kind of good practice at fastinitiative.org finance against slavery and trafficking it includes actually an interactive tool for allowing you to ask exactly that question what's my risk exposure what's my slavery footprint as an organization I think that's the first understanding the answer that question is the first step to doing something about it. I think the other thing is this particular issue falls under SDG 8.7 and I would like to say that unfortunately it's the only SDG that doesn't have indicators so I know that one of the things that young people and people are basically have really rallied around is the sustainable development goals and one of the ways that you could actually also contribute is actually going to what is this start advocating for indicators for SDG 8.7 I know work free foundation is actually working with governments to try and see if they can develop some indicators for that particular SDG to help us track progress so that we can be able to hold ourselves accountable. Wonderful so asking you know we talked earlier about asking some tough questions of our politicians of our Swiss politicians also of our banks residents of Davos if you see in the next few days a CEO or a banker or a politician sort of stumbling around lost you can as you guide them you can ask some tough questions we're going to do a quick lightning round starting with Sir Wainwright and then working our way up just in one sentence if there's one takeaway you want for this audience in the live stream to take away today in one sentence what would that be? I'd mobilize the community as a whole public-private partnerships are a great way to tackle the problem and this is a long sentence and going back to the first one the first points that James started with data is so important if we can if we can use data to learn much more about the problem that becomes the oil in the engine of connecting different communities as well as a great initiative in the UK by Stop the Traffic so-called TA others is starting to assemble data from lots of different actors in this space beginning to see a real sense of the problem when you see a wider sense of the problem it draw it can identify priorities and then give it give you give you some hooks by which a public-private partnership community can really get into this thank you yeah i think i i i'd agree with my comment would be along the same lines and in my opinion is is important to to bring visibility and to kind of the more we talk about the issue the more important it will be the more awareness it will raise the more it would the more it will affect the the leadership to do something and so basically it's all it all starts by understanding the problem and recognizing that this is a serious issue that it is necessary to to address and uh and once we once we get i mean once we we uh bring it we we raise it up and include it in the agenda uh then there may be other initiatives that will follow up actually in terms of providing a solution to to thank you uh i think basically one of the things that has consistently come up in the in the panel has been the fact that we are all connected and i know especially when we are in a forum like this where it's we are constantly as we've said james said we are constantly talking about economics economics and we are constantly talking about money i think for me it's understanding that we are all connected and the money and the data and all these things basically represents people and at the end of the day we want to build a world where people thrive they don't necessarily survive they actually thrive and we sort of have to ask ourselves what that looks like for all of us i think we haven't really been great at doing that because essentially we've left other people to pay the cost of all of us thriving and i hope that we can be more conscious in ensuring that all of us thrive because when one person has all of us had even if you are not feeling it right now as we've seen with climate change eventually it will come on your door so let's fix it right now it's very hard to say anything after that but i think that the key thing that sophie points to is empathy all of you have exercised a little leadership a little moral imagination by choosing to come and be here or to watch this and if there's one thing i could ask you to do when you leave it's simply to keep caring keep thinking about the people that we've been talking about today it doesn't cost you anything to care it doesn't cost you anything to act in your daily life from that place of care and you know what you might actually find that it makes you feel a lot better about the world so we've talked about in the past hour and a half we've talked about how we're all connected how it's important to care how small actions tiny tiny interventions because all of these issues are connected can actually make a real difference so in our last 90 seconds we're actually going to do some collective impact of our own so i'd like everybody to stand and i promise this is very easy no math this time individual actions can actually create noise can create a thunderstorm and have real impact so i would like for all of you um if you just put out your hands and simply follow me as i move up and down the aisle slowly but for now just do it there you go you have made a thunderstorm so each one of our tiny tiny actions actually can create an impact i'd like to thank my panelists this afternoon and thank you to everybody who came out and to everybody who watched at home thank you