 Good morning from New York. Welcome distinguished participants and guests. Thank you all for joining us. We're especially pleased to be co-hosting this event with the governments of Peru and Sierra Leone. It's wonderful to see Attorney General and Vice President joining us today as well. And I must give a special recognition to Grace Forrest whose father Andrew, a close personal friend, and they are the founding directors of Walk Free. It is remarkable to consider that the United Nations did not exist more than 75 years ago. And alarming to think just a couple of decades ago, there was no Palermo Protocol. Generations of victims were trafficked, abducted and forced into labor and sexual slavery. And there wasn't the coordinated commitment of governments to stop it. And even with our efforts today, the reality is that millions of people are being exploited by human traffickers as we speak. In preparing to speak with you today, I heard two stories, human tragedies that are just but a glimpse of the horrors facing so many. Sofia from Romania landed in Italy with her new fiance excited to start a new life. Her so-called fiance handed her an itemized bill for every meal, trip and gift he ever purchased for her, and forced her to engage in commercial sex to reimburse him. Madhu was thrilled when so-called recruiters offered him good wages in a Bangalore factory. After moving, he quickly realized the factory became a prison where he was forced to work 12-hour shifts for four years packaging chemicals under hazardous conditions. The landmark Palermo Protocol has served as the foundation for concerted international action to combat millions of cases like these. Global efforts to combat human trafficking have become more victim-centered and trauma-informed in approach, and we have gained invaluable insights from survivors. We have given the task of delivering on the promise of laws and building on the efforts of those who came before us. The United States has long been at the forefront of these efforts, and President Donald J. Trump has given it even greater emphasis over the last four years. He understands that cooperation among communities and nations is the best way to defeat this scourge. That is why in January of this year, he hosted a White House summit on human trafficking and signed an executive order to provide more tools to protect victims and prosecute traffickers. I share the President's commitment to this issue, and just next week we'll be traveling to Washington to participate in meeting of his interagency task force to monitor and combat trafficking in persons. I appreciate today's opportunity to mark the progress we have all made over the last 20 years. It is undeniable that the world community is now more aware of this horrific crime and more determined to end it. Such progress is worth celebrating, however, we must do much more. Criminals involved in human trafficking are taking advantage of failing governments, operating with accomplices overseas, and using forged documents to move victims across porous borders. We need rigorous implementation of protocol by all governments. We must put our decades of collaboration, research and experience to full use, support survivors by giving them voice and justice, and provide perpetrators no place to hide. No nation can tackle this challenge alone, and that is a fact confirmed by the PLARMO protocol. We must expand our collaboration and ensure that multilateral institutions, the private sector, civil society, faith-based organizations, and even individuals are working toward the same goals. This is why I am so pleased that we have such a diverse audience and a group of esteemed speakers here today. As we work toward the next milestone, I hope that, together, we continue to make progress toward the realization of the UN's founding ideals and eradication of human trafficking. Thank you, and with that, I would like to introduce Ambassador John Cotton Richmond, the United States Ambassador at large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons. Thank you, Ambassador Kraft. Permanent representatives to the United Nations, ladies and gentlemen, greetings from Washington, D.C. Before we begin with our distinguished speakers, allow me to provide a brief overview for this event. Given the historic year marking the 75th anniversary of the United Nations and the 20th anniversary of the United Nations protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, which supplemented the convention against transnational organized crime, we thought it'd be important to celebrate these milestones. This is a special time in history to be combating human trafficking. For almost 2,000 years, there was some form of legal slavery in the world. However, in the last 220 years, that's completely changed. Nearly every country in the world now has some sort of law against slavery. This is a massive historic hinge, and I believe the door of freedom is poised to swing wide. The Trafficking in Persons protocol is just as relevant today as it was when it was first adopted 20 years ago. The protocol marked a historic milestone when governments, for the first time, were able to reach consensus on a comprehensive definition of human trafficking, which includes sex trafficking and forced labor. As with any consensus, document, or treaty, it isn't perfect. The protocol does provide, however, a framework to address this crime, this human rights abuse, both nationally and transnationally. Governments can and should do more as traffickers continue to innovate, as they monetize people by diminishing their freedom and they profit from their victims, especially during this pandemic and global shutdown. The question for us in this moment of history is whether we can extend those parchment protections of law to the victims in need of those protections. Millions of exploited people all over the world are waiting for an answer to that question. Today, each speaker will provide their unique perspective on where we are as a global anti-trafficking movement and provide a view into the priorities of combating human trafficking as we look to the next 20 years and beyond. With that, I'd like to introduce our first speaker. We are honored to have Stephen Began, the United States Deputy Secretary of State. Prior to December of 2019, when he was sworn in, he served as the United States Special Representative for North Korea. He has three decades of experience in government and in the executive as well as legislative branch, as well as in the private sector. Deputy Began served as the Vice President of International Government Relations for the Ford Motor Company, where as a third generation Ford employee, Deputy Began oversaw all aspects of Ford's international government interactions, including through the Indo-Pacific region. With that, welcome, Deputy Began. Thank you very much, Ambassador Richmond for the introduction and it's great to be here with you and Ambassador Kraft. Good morning or good evening to everyone participating from around the world, especially our many distinguished speakers. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the landmark protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons which was agreed in Palermo, Italy. The protocol stands as proof of the tremendous achievements that can be realized when the international community comes together to combat human rights abuses and promote the rule of law. As a key step in positioning the United States to join that treaty, the US Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. That legislation was put into force on a bipartisan basis thanks to two tireless advocates for human rights, Representative Chris Smith in the House of Representatives, a Republican, and Senator Paul Wellstone in the Senate, a Democrat. Today, I'm honored to gather with you to reflect on the power of that legislation over the past 20 years and to look forward to see how we can build on our work in the decades ahead. Over the past 20 years, nearly every country in the world has enacted laws to criminalize all forms of trafficking in persons. There is nearly universal agreement on the importance of implementing policies and protocols to detect, investigate, and prosecute human trafficking cases, and to assist its victims. The tools are there, but we need to insist on their use. In 2019, our Trafficking in Persons report indicated that only 119,000 trafficking victims were identified globally, although an estimated 24.9 million victims likely exist. Together, we've formed groundbreaking partnerships. I'm grateful today for the presence of our co-sponsors from the governments of Sierra Leone and Peru, and I look forward to hearing from Sierra Leone's Vice President, Dr. Muhammad Joula, and Peru's Attorney General, Dr. Zahraida Avalos, about their country's efforts on anti-trafficking law enforcement and in assisting trafficking victims, particularly through civil society. Here in the United States, Secretary of State Pompeo chairs the President's Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking, which coordinates our government's efforts across 20 federal agencies. At the international level, we continue to expand our assistance. In fact, since 2001, the Trafficking in Persons office has managed more than $320 million in foreign assistance funds through more than 980 implemented awards. I'm particularly pleased to share that the State Department's program to end modern slavery is making a $15 million investment to combat child sex trafficking. We're also investing $5.6 million to implement impact evaluations across anti-trafficking projects. So as we come together today to reflect upon the progress we have made together, let us recommit ourselves to the next decade of work. I'd like to conclude with congratulating Bangladesh, Nepal, and Camaros, and Brunei, who are the newest countries to accede to this critically important treaty. We hope that they'll join us in calling on all countries that have not yet agreed to follow their example. Together, we can prevent human trafficking and hold accountable those who seek to profit from the exploitation of human beings, and we can do so for the dignity of all trafficking survivors. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Deputy Secretary. Next, I'm pleased to introduce Ms. Gatto Wally, the Executive Director of the United Nations Offices on Drugs and Crime, based in Vienna, Austria. Executive Director Wally has over 30 years of experience in the field of sustainable development, poverty reduction, and social protection, women and youth empowerment. Within Wally's UN capacity, she also serves as the Director General of the United Nations Office in Vienna. Before assuming her position within the UN in November 2019, Wally served as Egypt's Minister of Social Solidarity and developed a national anti-drug strategy. She led a nationwide drug awareness campaign, along with youth and pioneered initiatives, programming to rehabilitate and reintegrate persons with substance abuse into society. With that, I'll turn it over to Executive Director Wally. Thank you, Ambassador. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you so much for joining today. Deputy Secretary Began, Ambassador Kraft, Ambassador Richmond, Excellencies Distinguished Participants, my thanks to the U.S., Peru, and Sierra Leone for holding this important event on how we can advance the fight against human trafficking and better protect victims. Challenges that have gained a special urgency in the COVID crisis. The adoption of the UN protocol against trafficking in persons in 2000 represented a landmark achievement in addressing this too often hidden crime affecting the most vulnerable in our societies. Criminal groups target the most vulnerable in our societies to traffic them for sexual exploitation, forced labor, or use in criminal activities in every region of the world rich and poor. According to UNODC's latest data, over 60% of detecting trafficking victims are women and girls, while nearly one-third are children. Human trafficking violates, exploits, and abuses. But just two decades ago, human trafficking was shockingly not always viewed as a crime. Women and men trafficked were not always seen as victims. Sometimes they were even blamed for their own misfortune. Failing to recognize a crime as a crime leaves those trafficked without help or hope, while their traffickers carry on their impunity, failing the crime victims, and failing the cause of the justice. The protocol offered the first internationally recognized definition of the crime of trafficking in persons, which is now reflected in the national laws of nearly 170 countries around the world. And thanks to the protocol, we have come a long way in the past 20 years, changing attitudes and improving criminal justice responses. Sorry. Together, we have built on the protocol to develop a comprehensive framework, supporting international cooperation, as well as national implementation of its provisions. The protocol notably represented a major advance in putting victims at the center of anti-trafficking responses, and we have continued to strengthen the protection elements of the protocol in the decades since. The General Assembly has continuously improved this framework, including through regular review of the Global Plan of Action against Trafficking in Persons. The Security Council has put the spotlight on human trafficking in conflict and the use of trafficking by terrorist groups by adopting milestone resolution in 2016 and 2017. UN Action has been underpinned by regional anti-human trafficking instruments and action plans growing on the protocol. UNODC provides in-country support on the ground through legislative assistance and technical cooperation. Our experts in Vienna, and in more than 40 other locations around the world, deliver direct advice and support to police officers, prosecutors and judges, as well as victim assistance providers. Our collective efforts have made a difference. UNODC, as mandated by the General Assembly, produces the biannual global report on trafficking in persons. We will be launching the 2020 report in December. Our comprehensive research, covering 145 countries, shows that greater investment in capacities has resulted in better investigation and prosecution rates overall. Since the entry into force of the protocol, the average number of victims identified globally has tripped and has, as has the number of traffickers convicted. Through protocol implementation, the international community has improved its understanding of trafficking patterns and flows. This has helped to shed light on less visible forms of exploitation, such as trafficking in persons for organ removal, identify vulnerable groups, including domestic workers, migrants and asylum seekers, and to tailor interventions to women and children. Ladies and gentlemen, building on these hard-won results offers the best hope for preventing more people from falling victim to criminal traffickers. The COVID crisis and deepening socioeconomic inequalities has left many more children, women and men, at heightened risk of being trafficked. As life has moved online during the pandemic, cyber crime and online exploitation are expanding. There remains much work to be done to address gaps in human trafficking responses. Trafficking investigations and prosecutions remain low compared with other crimes. In many countries, traffickers continue to get away with light sentences and illicit proceeds are often laundered and become difficult to trace or confiscate. Victim assistance, social protection, and effective rehabilitation programs remain very limited. UNODC is firmly committed to providing comprehensive support to member states to address these challenges. Working within the UN system and with other partners, we will help strengthen holistic and coordinated responses, including to address root causes by promoting the empowerment of women and girls as well as facilitating fair work. Next week, the conference of the parties to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols starts in Vienna. After years of negotiations, governments have committed to a regular peer review of implementation. This offers a powerful means to identify technical assistance needs and encourage further progress. The best way for us to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the protocol and the 75th anniversary of the UN is to reaffirm and redouble our commitment to protecting the most vulnerable among us. We need developed and developing countries alike to share best practices and information so we can better understand risks and trafficking flows. Now more than ever, as we deal with unprecedented challenges in the COVID crisis and economic downturn. We are grateful for the strong support of donors like the United States. And I salute the efforts of its government to eradicate human trafficking. We rely on you to help ensure that the protocol and review mechanism can live up their potential. Greater action relies on greater solidarity to clean up global supply chains in the private sector as well as in the public procurement to strengthen the capacities of all countries to address root causes of poverty and lack of opportunity and to support vulnerable groups who are most at risk. This is what we need to build on to work of the last two decades. I urge all member states to make the best use of this opportunity. Thank you once again for this timely and necessary discussion. Thank you, Executive Director Wally, for highlighting the impact of the United Nations Trafficking in Persons Protocol. And what you see is the next phase of government's anti-trafficking efforts. We now turn to the second segment of our event. And we're honored to have Sierra Leone and Peru co-host this event with the United States. The government of Sierra Leone recently secured convictions of traffickers, prioritized trainings for officials, and expanded its engagement with NGOs. The government sought to amplify its central task force to work on establishing regional anti-trafficking task forces in all 16 districts. We are honored to have the Vice President of Sierra Leone, Dr. Mohamed Julejalo, Vice President Julejalo started his professional career in the United Nations in March of 2000, working as a program officer in the United Nations mission in Kosovo. He previously served as the senior advisor at the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Mali. The Peruvian government has a strong history of working closely with local and international civil society organizations to combat human trafficking. This successful collaboration has been further demonstrated by Peru's partnership with civil society implementing partners under the United States Peru Child Protection Compact Partnership. We are honored to have the attorney general of Peru, Dr. Zoraja Avalos Rivera. She was elected by the Council of Supreme Prosecutors in March 2019 to serve a three-year term. Dr. Avalos has led the public ministry since January 2019. We look forward to hearing about the innovative anti-trafficking efforts of our co-hosts. In addition, we're also honored to have two civil society leaders, one from Walkfree, the other from the Survivor Alliance, here to share their expertise, findings, and impressions. Grace Forrest is Walkfree's founding director. The youngest appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association of Australia, Grace also serves on the board of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue and was selected as one of the 10 global leaders in the One Young World's Young Leaders Against Sexual Violence Initiative. Min Dang serves as the executive director of Survivor's Alliance, working to unite and empower survivors of slavery and human trafficking around the world to become leaders in the anti-trafficking movement. She's currently working on her PhD at the University of Nottingham, focusing on the well-being of survivors. She's also served as a member of the first United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking. After our distinguished panelists provide the remarks, we'll have an opportunity to ask questions of our panelists. Questions will come from the permanent representatives who are joining us from around the world, as well as from the audience joining by livestream today. With that, we'll turn for the remarks from Sierra Leone's vice president, Dr. Jule Jala. Thank you, thank you very much, Ambassador. Distinguished ladies, excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. First, I feel extremely honored to be part of this discussion to celebrate the 28th anniversary of the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking impasses, especially women and children. The 75th anniversary provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the situation set, the UN and other international bodies have made to promote the rule of law, to promote and protect human rights and the challenges that it is against this backdrop that I will catalog our experiences and efforts to combat trafficking impasses. And that our experiences shows in Sierra Leone clearly underscore the point that Ambassador Kraft just made, that viable interstate coordination is vital to fighting, combatting trafficking impasses. 13 years after the passing of our Anti-Human Trafficking Act of 2005, it was only in 2008 that my government took deliberate and targeted action to make trafficking risky and expensive by dealing with entrenched problems of impunity and corruption and laying a solid foundation for the rule of law to be applied. We finally undertook a gap analysis focusing on both the internal and international legal framework and identified opportunities that will allow us to strengthen prosecution and ensure accountability while at the same time undertaking domestic reforms to build the kind of systems we need that will discourage young people to move out of this country. In short, 2018 to 2020, we had two objectives. First, guarantee survivors a speedy redress to trials and promote convictions as a way of increasing the real cost of trafficking for perpetrators. What has Sierra Leone been able to achieve in the short term? Well, the scorecard is as follows. In 2009, coordination on combating trafficking impasses was elevated to my office to enable improve immunization and effectiveness among government stakeholders to fight, to intensify the fight. The office of the vice president supported the minister of social welfare to develop a rapid response plan to address the critical issue of securing convictions on trafficking in persons as an outcome of the gap analysis. This process was a strong signal that the presidency is taking this fight seriously and it also allowed us to move from rhetoric of condemning trafficking to concrete action to ensure that this venture becomes expensive and risky for perpetrators. Within the year, we applied legal procedures that led to a reduction in the time for prosecuting trafficking cases by 50%. Special judges were assigned to exclusively preside over trafficking in persons matters and a dedicated prosecutor from the Atone General's office was designated for TIP cases. In February 2020, Sierra Leone held its first conviction on trafficking and sentences of 20 and eight years were handed down to two perpetrators. This was the first time in the 15 years since that law was enacted that a trafficker was convicted. To date, Sierra Leone has secured a total of six convictions under the 2005 act. We still see an opportunity to strengthen the current anti-trafficking act and ensure its immunization with other laws such as the sexual offenses act, giving the next source between trafficking and sexual violence, especially against women. In 2019, the president declared a state of emergency on sexual violence and rape. This allowed the government to prioritize resources to remove roadblocks in the prosecution process and reduce the delays in justice and ensure that stiffer penalties are handed down to traffickers. Also in 2019, we passed a labor migration policy to bring some sanity in the recruitment processes for our citizens seeking better economic opportunities abroad. We appreciate that more needs to be done in this area as some of the strategies, including placing a moratorium on these recruitment agencies, usually forces them to operate on the ground, creating more risk for trafficking to go undetected and reduce the opportunities for victims to engage with authorities and access properly vetted employment opportunities. Funding from government's domestic revenue for the fight against TIP has also increased exponentially from 2018. Funding has been directed towards public awareness raising campaigns, decentralization of the TIP administration, training of government officials on the referral systems, public sensitization in high risk community that has been critical in our prevention strategy. We also continue to build strategic partnership with civil society organizations in various areas, particularly collaborated with local NGOs to build additional centers for trafficking victims. Sierra Leone also launched in September 2020 the anti-trafficking action plan that covers the period 2020 to 2025. And its activities are parts of the government budget process to ensure that TIP interventions are adequately funded. Government is also providing micro-credit schemes for survivors, especially women, as livelihood options to ameliorate the factors that may have led the individual to be trafficked in the first place. We believe that in the short term we have effectively utilized the strong political will to mainstream TIP in our domestic discourse which has gone a long way to unravel the sense of impunity surrounding this malice. In the medium term, we see an opportunity to meaningfully address the push factors. Key to this is the lack of economic opportunities that push our youth and women to undertake the Perilous Temple Roan or seek domestic work in deplorable conditions. I consider this the most significant challenge that we have in Sierra Leone and West Africa more broadly. It is this perennial problem of poverty that has to be addressed as part of a more longer term and holistic approach to dismantling trafficking in persons. However, in our medium term strategy, we are looking at other push factors such as the lack of effective information sharing, limited resources for training, and weak monitoring mechanisms at our borders as key contributing factors among others. As we think more strategically about staying a step ahead in the fight against human trafficking, my government is committed to supporting regional coordination at both the Mano River Union and the economic community of West Africa and state levels in line with our medium term plan to address the push factors and to bolster the coordination mechanism to detect trafficking and provide support to survivors. We will specifically work with the economic community of West Africa and state, sister state, to address the migration linkages with human trafficking and forced labor in a manner that allows us to streamline the bureaucracies that amper our ability to curb trafficking. Given our government focus on using technology to solve policy challenges, our directorate of science, technology, and innovation will pilot an incubator on improving tracking and reporting on trafficking for frontline border agencies and our foreign missions. The incubator is expected to provide solutions for improved and faster information sharing using digital platforms. FODER will propose a set of common metrics, firstly at the Mano River Union that will be measured at regular intervals to allow for improved tracking and interoperability to engender deeper coordination based on common target. This allows for better polarization and create a conducive ecosystem for learning and collaboration. This we believe could go a long way to help us better rationalize how funds are routed, how funds are pulled and utilized in the subregion to prevent, prosecute, and protect victims. FODER, the government of Sierra Leone, is taking robust steps to engage receiving countries particularly in the Middle East. Recently, our president was in Lebanon. He had discussions with Lebanese authorities. We have decided also as a government to make sure that TIP issues, it is at the heart of our bilateral engagement with countries in the Middle East. We are championing strategies to identify and direct resources from destination countries for repatriation, which is in many times a challenge for countries like Sierra Leone to ensure that citizens return home safely. As an example of this is the work that our embassy in the UAE and the UAE Foreign Ministry, including the UAE National Committee for the Prevention of Human Trafficking are doing on developing a strategy of repatriation as part of our mutual cooperation objective. These actions are part of our broader objective to prioritize trafficking in persons in our foreign policy posture, which seeks to focus on coordination, more resources, and better aligned domestic and international legal framework in the fight against trafficking. Currently, we are working not only with the UAE, but also with authorities from Lebanon to repatriate migrant workers to Sierra Leone. We have received, we are expected to receive about 494 among with 297 trafficked persons to conclude distinguished ladies and gentlemen, in spite of the collaboration and cooperation, I call on all countries that have not acceded to the Parliament protocol to make this a top priority to increase the scale and intensity of the fight. If we are to be a step ahead, we have to ensure that addressing trafficking is the key component of our respective foreign policy engagement. Intentionally, intentionally about our measuring the actions, especially those that are within international laws and declaration that we are signatory to. The fight against trafficking is not only a single countries endeavor, it is a multitude of engagement across all of our countries at the center of which are human beings who have lost their freedom. If we are to be a step ahead, we must ensure that the fight is not impeded by boundaries, borders and bureaucracies that aid and abate the activities of traffickers. But rather we should bolster our collective action to protect, prevent and prosecute and support survival-led anti-trafficking initiatives. I thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I particularly appreciate your efforts around prevention and recruitment agencies and holding them accountable as well as the sponsorship system, the kafala system. And I appreciate also the idea of making it expensive and risky for traffickers to operate. We appreciate your remarks. We'll now turn to the Attorney General of Peru, Dr. Zrida Alvilos. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, panelists, good morning to all of you. It's a pleasure to be here here as a prosecutor of Peru and I bring the words of the public ministry of my country. This is a very important issue to be brought to these panelists within the framework of the General Assembly of the UN. Today, we are here to recognize the advances that we were able to obtain and the fight against this scourge. And we started with a 2000 protocol to process, protect and prevent women and children, especially the protocol of Palermo. And also the fight against organized crime. And this is a new approach in Peru because we were able to link this with the transnational groups and that allow the illegal entrance of migrants in different countries. Why is important this protocol? This protocol that we celebrate 20 years now is a very important international law because it was the starting point to recognize at the global level how difficult this problem was and the need to try to find solutions. From the moment that this law was enacted, we follow different international law and we implemented different laws with outreach programs and we worked with the private and public sector and the citizens generally. We have different laws that show the spirit of the Palermo protocol because this not only talks about the prosecutor, but first is to identify the crime then to prosecute the crime and then to condemn them. So this is the first time that we have this protocol that looks in a very comprehensive way to solve this social issue. Not only from the criminal point of view, which kind of laws do we have? In Peru, we created for the first time the law 2018 or the law against trafficking in person in 2007. The main issue was to prosecute this crime based on the Palermo protocol. In 2014, we passed a law 3251. This is very important because it criminalized the trafficking in person. It is, we have a better protection at the protocol in crude, not only the different issues by setup, by the protocol, by the talk about abduction, fraud, deception and any other way of exploitation. And therefore it allowed a guide and the type of criminal activities that a human being can be subjected to. Therefore the victim for us is very important and is higher than the international law. Therefore the trafficking in person will be considered as a crime. For example, the employment of minors is also considered a crime. Therefore we can show that the public ministry set up a description of what a victim is. It is something that we didn't have before because we had specialized services regarding the vulnerability of the victims. We looked from the medical and psychological and topological point of view and this is a very new way of looking at this crime. Therefore the public ministry also gather the recommendations of the protocol. We also have the different ways of receiving the victims like for example the harboring of victims and the treatment that we give. In 2014 we set up a specialized prosecutor's office for the trafficking in persons. The four in the areas where this crime was committed for us basically in Madre de Dios, Puno, Loreto, Tagna in the border areas. Therefore we have 10 prosecutor's office. We have 34 prosecutor's districts because of funding we were able to set up only 10 prosecutor's office. But our idea is to implement two more and maybe next year we will be able to have this kind of prosecutor's office in the 34 districts. We also have to point out in 2019 the Supreme Court made a very important decision because we know that we have to protect the dignity of the human being not just the freedom of a person. Therefore the trafficking in person affects the dignity of a person and affects the vulnerability of this person. Therefore we have to protect these victims and therefore the future life of these people are very badly affected. And therefore what are the challenges that we have vis-a-vis now that we are approaching the 200th year anniversary of Peru getting its independence. We will increase more specialized prosecutors that will deal with trafficking in person. As I said, our dream is to have prosecutor's office in the 34 districts that we have in the country. We also want to create police units that are specialized in handling these crimes. We want to increase the amount of anthropologists or psychologists that we want. We want to have a mixed group of investigators. We want to implement virtual platforms to be able to deal with trafficking in persons. And based on our experience, we were able to respond to these crimes. However, we want to encourage different countries to create a different prosecutor's office but in an international level so that the borders do not become an obstacle because for them, for the traffickers, the borders are not a problem. I am sure that the more of us that work together, the more possibilities of success that we will have. Therefore we have to fight for the dignity of all human beings, especially those that are so vulnerable. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Madam Attorney General. I appreciate your emphasis on specialized prosecutors and the idea of holding traffickers accountable. We know that prosecutions alone will not solve this problem. They will not alone stop trafficking, but prosecutions are a necessary and essential component along with protection and prevention. So thank you for your remarks. We'll now turn to Ms. Grace Forrest, founding director of Walk Free. Thank you, Ambassador Richmond. I'm honored members of the Security Council and I'd like to give my special acknowledgments to Min Dang of Survivor Alliance. May we all ensure that survivor voices are present in every room and space where decisions are being made. Palema was the first global agreement to address trafficking in persons. It was a line in the sand, a universal acknowledgement that we could no longer turn a blind eye to the blatant disregard for another human being's freedom and bodily autonomy. However, 20 years on from Palermo, modern slavery, human trafficking, and other forms of extremely exploitative work are more prevalent today than any other time in human history. Racism, gender discrimination, inequality are still roadblocks to sustainable development. This underscores the need to address ongoing exploitation around the world and call out injustice and entrenched discrimination where it occurs. Today, for the first time, we understand the true extent and impact of modern slavery on women and girls across the world. Walk Free's new report, Stacked Odds, reveals that almost 29 million women and girls are currently living in modern slavery. That is one out of over 130 women and girls on Earth. We now know that we must tackle this global challenge through a gendered lens. If over 70% of victims are women and girls, resources must follow accordingly. Female's account for 99% of all victims of forced sexual exploitation, 84% of all victims of forced marriage, and 58% of all victims of forced labor. To put this in perspective, there are more women and girls living in slavery than there are people living in Australia. Although the findings of this report are shocking, we know they are also conservative. As they don't yet take into account the serious predicted ramifications of COVID-19, which we know is driving greater risk of forced marriages around the world, modern slavery, and highly exploitative work conditions in global supply chains. This report looks at how and why women are so disproportionately affected by modern slavery and shows that eradicating modern slavery and empowering women and girls goes hand in hand. Foundationally, this report gives spotlight to survivors from around the world. Case studies that show us that every human life is intrinsically valuable, but also showcase that each person represents tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands more like them. We seek to initiate policy discussions with global lawmakers to remove the legal roadblocks that prevent women and girls from fully and freely participating. We believe the eradication of modern slavery and human trafficking is not possible while these legal roadblocks continue to exist. We are calling on governments around the world to legislate against child and forced marriage. Forced and child marriage removes a woman or girl's control of her own life and is a major contributing factor to the female experience of modern slavery. It is unacceptable that there are still 136 countries yet to criminalize forced and child marriage. A girl and a woman should be in charge of basic decisions relating to her body and her future. And until we get that power back to her, we believe sustainable development is not possible. But we are also calling for the eradication of the expletive systems such as kafala. Why does this system continue to exist in the 21st century? Why are migrant workers a critical and such integral part of the global economy treated as subhuman? Why is this legally allowed? We are looking at a situation where a migrant worker's immigration status is legally bound to an individual employer or sponsor for their contract period. This normalizes situations of exploitation of migrant workers around the world. And to give you just one example, we know there are some 500,000 migrant workers trapped in just Lebanon alone. Many of whom are experiencing unprecedented levels of violence and exploitation. There are case studies within this report that show women being forced to work for nothing more than food to keep them alive. No payment for themselves. No payment for their families. No way of getting home. No way to socially distance. This is unacceptable that these systems continue to exist in a formalized legalized way. And we call on the United Nations to end such legal forums for exploitation. Lastly, we need all governments and businesses to prioritize supply chain transparency to ensure that all workers and members of local supply chains are protected, not just the people at the top. We need to guarantee in the most simple of ways a living wage for all people and protection mechanisms in crisis situations. If COVID-19 has shown us nothing, it is that 2020 is uncovering so much of what we've tried to ignore and now can't. Normalized exploitation in our global economy is part of that. The great reset gives us an opportunity to build back better, reassess migration pathways, put power and general equality back into the hands of workers and away from systems that seek to harm them. Leaders may feel that addressing modern slavery is secondary to tackling a pandemic. However, we must remain focused on the fact that the enslavement of tens of millions of people is also a global crisis. In 2020, governments can no longer claim ignorance for the realities of modern slavery. And the Palomo Protocol is the basis on which we must continue to grow and call for legal enforcement around the world. We are at a time when the world is awakening to ongoing injustices, questioning historical inequalities and confronting unprecedented crises. We are realizing that we are all responsible for correcting past crimes against humanity, but also that large scale systemic change is possible. As we rebuild, as we reassess who we want to be, we must take up this opportunity of pause. Our current trajectory has been radically disrupted because of this pandemic. And because of this mass disruption, we must take up the call at arms to free tens of millions of people trapped in slavery in our global supply chains and remove all legal roadblocks that prevent women and girls from fully and freely participating. This is to end slavery in our lifetime and to reach true gender equality. The two go hand in hand. The time is now. The future is female. Thank you, Ms. Forrest. So grateful for you encouraging us to consider the connection between gender and ending trafficking, as well as appreciate the intrinsic value of every human life. We'll consider and think through perhaps during our Q and A more about the kafal system that you called upon to be dismantled as we go forward. And I appreciate the call that we cannot stop our efforts on trafficking even in the midst of this global pandemic. We'll now shift to hear remarks from Min Dang, the executive director of the Survivor Alliance. Thank you, Ambassador Richmond. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Distinguished participants and guests. Importantly, I wanna say hello to the survivors of slavery and human trafficking. Whether you're watching right now, listening while doing homework with children or just here in spirit, I stand here humbled and a bit overwhelmed of the task of doing justice to you and your communities in my short remarks. I want you to know that I see you, I hear you and I believe you. For the past three years, I've supported the development of a worldwide network of survivors and survivor leaders. Survivor Alliance has over 250 members across the globe. Our members' insights and recommendations have already made an impact on local and international anti-trafficking efforts. We believe that survivors can provide the answers to the questions we have all been asking. The problem is survivors are inconsistently invited to provide our expertise. Rarely are we provided with training on counter-trafficking concepts and vocabulary, nor have we been systematically and successfully established interventions that enable survivors to traverse the journey from victim to survivor to leader. I know that today is about celebration, so I will begin there before I return to provide us a vision for the next 20 years. In addition to the successes that others have mentioned, I want to highlight a few that often go overlooked. I want to celebrate the survivor leaders who have taken up the cause of pushing the movement to recognize that our voices are central to this work. It is because of you that I stand here, and it is because of you that the movement is beginning to expect and demand survivor engagement. To the extended family, chosen families, and community members of survivors, I thank you. You have stepped in to fill the gaps, paying for groceries or lending an ear, even if you didn't know what to say or if it was enough. And lastly, for now, I want to celebrate our allies, those of you who continue to walk with survivors on our path to full freedom. For those of you who are direct allies of mine, you have certainly dealt with your fair share of being challenged and being pushed to be more vulnerable and self-aware. But today is not just a celebration, it's about reflection. Where did we wish the anti-trafficking movement was 20 years ago? And where do we want to be in 2040, 20 years from now? In the year 2000, I was still being trafficked by my own parents. It would be another six years before I established my freedom from exploitation, and at least another two years before I learned of the Palermo Protocol. I was 20 years old, the same age of Frederick Douglass when he escaped his enslavement. But as an American citizen, able to become highly educated, I've had a lot of opportunities to recover, heal, and participate in the anti-slavery movement. It pains me to imagine that we might be at the 40th anniversary of the Palermo Protocol, hearing from someone who is being enslaved right now. My question to everyone today is, as a global society, are we willing to restructure our society? Are we willing to change our behavior and reorganize our lives so that it is actually unacceptable for any human being to be enslaved for any moment of time? Adults punish children for unacceptable behaviors much less severe than exploiting another human. So what must it take for our counter-trafficking efforts to invite widespread change in behavior? My recommendation for the next 20 years includes a reframing of our movement. Instead of the 4-P model, let's talk about the 4-H model. First, health. And if you really want to stick to the P's, you can think of public health. Taking a health and public health framework allows us to look at human trafficking outside of the legal frameworks. They allow us to approach the issue from a place of concern for our fellow human beings. Human trafficking is sadly no longer an anomaly to society. It is built into the very fabric of unfettered and unregulated global capitalism. When human beings are desperate, we become predatory or we become vulnerable to predation because in either case, we are willing to do anything for survival. The health of a human being is about life beyond survival as the World Health Organization indicates health is more than the absence of illness. It is the presence of well-being. As a global health concern, human trafficking affects individual level and population level well-being. A focus on health will also push us to spend more resources and time on survivor's health and well-being after exiting exploitation. As my colleague and an international anti-slavery leader, Sophie Untianne speaks about focusing on survivor's overall health will lead us to consider that aftercare is part of a survivor's justice. Let me repeat, appropriate aftercare and adequate resources to rebuild one's life are part of a survivor's justice. Whether or not our perpetrators are in jail, survivors must live with the long-term effects of trauma. We often bear these costs financially and emotionally alone. The second H is human rights. Human rights means nothing without governments to enforce and provide access to these rights. Our fellow humans and community members are responsible for upholding our collective rights. Without collective accountability, individual human rights become a philosophical claim without any real-life entitlements. Victims and survivors of human trafficking need real-life tangible access to the resources that enable our human rights. Third, humility. Most people who are deemed experts and leaders in anti-trafficking work are not survivors. I do not wish to demean anyone or belittle the hard work that people have put in over the years. We need you and we want you to continue to work with us. At the same time, we need to impress the sense of humility on everyone who has not survived human trafficking and who works in the field. It is not lost on me, and I hope it is not lost on you, that our salaries, our positions, our titles and are in part due to the fact that people are currently exploited today. My own economic freedom and stability hinges on the fact that there is an anti-trafficking field. Now I've recently taken the UK government survey for potential career transfers I might make. I have the skills to be a plumber, a corner and a boxer. Interestingly enough, I took boxing classes a while ago from an actual boxing trainer. What I learned is that you're supposed to keep your hands up in front of your face all the time to protect yourself. The problem is if we're boxers in the ring fighting to end human trafficking, our hands are above our face and are blocking our ability to see clearly. We need to be less defensive. We need the self-awareness skills and the ego strength to withstand criticism and to approach our work as if we don't know the answers. Survivors of human trafficking are people who have the profound ability to be humble. We've had to rebuild our lives from scratch, face deep questions about reality and truth. Am I worthy of love or am I here to be used? Is the world fair or is it unjust? To the people who say they are trying to help me understand that there are some things that they just can't understand. Or is it more important for each of us to recognize our own achievements than it is to elevate the voices of survivors? This leads me to the last H, hope. Survivors of slavery and human trafficking have a superhuman power to sustain hope in situations that most of us would deem hopeless. I have seen this hope in survivors who are building their own communities, who provide for themselves, especially when governments and NGOs have failed to do so or fallen short. Survivors are building sustainable communities in which we can live, love, work and play. It is time for this movement to invest our hope in survivors and our ability not just to survive, but to lead humbly, courageously and collectively. We must invest in survivors and survivor led communities. We must learn to listen. We must learn how to elevate without tokenizing, pedestalizing one survivor over another. We must move beyond the vision of survivors as service recipients. We are service providers. We are activists and researchers. Whether we have been formally educated or not, we can be thought leaders and policymakers. We can be, and I promise you we will be, the leaders in the next 20 years. I hope you will join us. Thank you, Min. I appreciate your leadership within this movement and your call for us to think about justice including aftercare, as well as bringing humility and hope to this movement. I also look forward to the leadership of survivors in the next 20 years. We're grateful for everyone. Well, I appreciate each of the interventions by our four panelists. We're now gonna move into a time of question and answer. Several questions have been submitted. We're grateful for the permanent representatives that are a part of this today. We'll ask each of the panelists to keep their comments and answers as brief as possible so that we can have the maximum number of questions in the time that remains. With that, we'll turn to the permanent representative of Japan who asks the panelists, in their opinion, what is the most critical factor in successfully fighting human trafficking when legal systems vary from country to country? Perhaps we can start with Ms. Forrest. There's a lot of competing interests there, so that's a hard one. I think, as I said, removing the roadblocks for women and girls to fully and fairly participate has surely got to be foundational. But I think one of the quickest ways that the eradication of normalized exploitation could occur is by holding multinational companies to account. It is not okay with slavery, exploitation, human trafficking, and normalized parts of our economies, and they are. And I think that ensuring that government and business accountability goes hand in hand and is formalized is a quick way that we can create further change in this field. Thank you so much. We'll ask the same question to the attorney general from Peru. When you think about prioritizing which intervention at this point, do you think is most critical to stop human trafficking given the fact that legal systems vary from country to country? I think this is a very important issue. We need to talk about prevention, early detection in order to avoid these crimes from happening. Another factor that I think is important as well when it comes to prevention is awareness and making people more aware of these issues because human resource is extremely important. We need to start working so that people know what their rights are. I was talking to colleagues who are prosecuting these cases. And one thing they told me was that oftentimes victims, it's not only their body that's been kidnapped, it's their mind as well. They don't believe they're victims. So we need to make people aware. If we don't work on prevention, we can't get ahead. Everything's important, protection, prosecution, but I think that there needs to be feedback here. So I think that what we need to work on first and foremost is prevention. I appreciate that. Prevention is critical. Perhaps shifting to Sierra Leone, to Vice President Giulia Giallo, as you're prioritizing, what do you think is the most critical factor, the most critical intervention right now to combat trafficking in persons? Well, interestingly, I have just cataloged what we have been doing at the domestic front. And then we realized that there are guards because what is happening in Sierra Leone today, most in the last couple of months, like the last two years, three years, most of the people that have been trafficked out of this country, they didn't flow out of Sierra Leone. They were transported by road to Guinea, to Gambia, to Senegal, and then from there, they fly out. So it shows that the priority we want to focus on now is to see how we can internationalize it in the sense that how can we get the regional organizations like the Mano River Union, these sub-regional organizations, to be able to invest the same level of energy we are doing here. We can do everything here, but if we are not connected to them, if we also don't help them to come to speed so that they also can fast-track a prosecution, they also can put in place mechanism to stop trafficking, effort will be very, very, very, very, very limited. In addition to that, we have realized recently from data, I've just told you that we are getting Sierra Leoneans coming in from UAE, from Lebanon. We have been interviewing them. We have tried to get an insight into their perspective. I totally agree with one of the, when Fosta was saying that majority of them are young girls and women, young girls and women. So we realized that this socioeconomic implication, the growing rise of poverty and the inability of families today in this part of the world, particularly in poor and vulnerable communities to be able to put life together. That is why also we have introduced micro-credit scheme. We have just, as a government, we just launched, we just put together $5 million to help women in vulnerable communities so that they can go into small businesses. This can maybe discourage them to go, but I see the priority for us, particularly in the West Africa subregion, is to internationalize trafficking, anti-trafficking effort to get neighboring countries to get the same tempo to be able to know that we have a shared understanding of what we need to do and then a shared effort to stop trafficking so that Sierra Leoneans cannot be trafficked out of Senegal. Sierra Leoneans cannot be trafficked out of Gambia, out of Mali. When we have that kind of subregional engagement, I think for us, that is a priority at this stage. I appreciate that, Mr. Vice President. And the same question to Min Dang at the University of Nottingham. If you're going to prioritize one intervention, what do you think is the most critical at this stage? I think that one of the most critical interventions is to be a dead horse survivor engagement because I think that when we bring survivors into the fold, we actually improve interventions. And so I think that we actually need to focus on education and empowerment of survivors to then use the expertise and knowledge to go back into their communities and help to prevent and to provide aftercare. Thank you so much. From Civil Society, Dr. Sandy Morgan, a professor at Vanguard University has a question for Dr. Avalos in Peru. Dr. Morgan asks, I've watched the progress of girls' education in Peru for many years. Do you believe that there is support or evidence that these programs have prevented human trafficking, especially labor trafficking? Dr. Avalos. Well, in Peru, especially the public ministry for us is very, very important to treat the cases of young kids. They're vulnerable not only because they are young, but because they are in the developmental stage. We have a protocol to take care of victims. And there is one chapter on how to deal with girls and boys and adolescents. I think that education is very important. As I said, prevention for me is very important because the kids, not only do you protect the kids, you have to empower women so that they know the rights that they have. For me, it's very important to work with the risk factors. When somebody with a woman, for example, that's really is assured of her capabilities, she will not fall as a victim. So the only thing that I do is give them education, but I don't empower them, they are not going, they might fall as victims. So we have an agreement with the ministry of women and vulnerable population that is related to those cases for kids and adolescents. Why do we do this? Because we can work in a comprehensive manner to be able to fight this tolerance that we see in this society or this indifference that we see in this society. And fortunately, some people really don't, are not aware exactly how important this crime is. And sometimes the ministries of economies do not have, do not channel money to create prosecutor's office to fight this crime. I think that we have made some strides, but I think there is a long way to go. Thank you so much, Madam Attorney General. Our next question is for the Vice President of Sierra Leone and is a timely question about global poverty and starvation, timely because today the World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And the head of the World Food Program has estimated that half a billion people will be forced into global poverty due to the government shutdown orders around the world. So the question comes from Thad Bardson of the Organization Unseen. And he asks, with the rising global poverty and starvation, which aspect of trafficking do you anticipate to be most concerning? Mr. Vice President. Well, basically from my own experience is illegal migrant workers. Because what you have today, because I am speaking from data, what you have today of the people, the survivors, we have been interviewed and the young girls and women that are coming back to Sierra Leone, most of them are saying that they are moving out of this country because they think going to solicit job in other countries will improve their economic prospects because there is poverty, there is the inability of the state to provide jobs and then to make life very comfortable to them. So they have been forced out of that. So I think for us, when poverty, better economic prospects outside must have forced them to move out. But even beyond that, but even beyond that, if I don't think, I don't know at this stage whether we have data, but I can tell you we most have got more countries that are in terms of the human poverty in the human development in this country most have been very poor, but maybe their trafficking data is very low. That is something we have to look into. I don't know at this stage, but what I'm saying is that majority of these illegal migrant workers that we are trafficked out of Sierra Leone are young girls and women, majority of the young girls are women. Today they are coming back, they are saying why did you take this adventure? Why did you want to go? Why were you encouraged? You know who encouraged you? Why was it very easy for you to fall prey to this? Most of them say we are going out for better economic prospects, but I think even beyond poverty, a country can be poor, a country poverty, a country can be poor, there will be starvation, but yet still, if you don't have people who exploit that situation to help them traffic, to help them to move them out, then trafficking will not take place because on their own they don't just move. There is a cattle, there is a very effective coordination. So I think in as much as we are going to address poverty and global starvation as one impediment to trafficking, as one impediment to trafficking in passing, there is also the need to enforce, to enforce prosecution so that at least we build the capacity of the law officers, of the police to be able to track people who exploit extremely vulnerable people. In Sierra Leone, that is why we have also decided that this year we unleashed a program, I've just said it, $5 million to support microcredit and we are going to target vulnerable communities. We are going to target communities that have been the source of recruitment, the source of recruitment of illegal migrant workers and we are going to target young girls and women. We are going to help them not only with small capital to do business, but to create skills for them to improve their savings. And we think a combination of all of this will go. But here data shows that majority of these young girls and women that go out of this country that are trafficked out of this country, they got into this essentially and the reason they give today is poverty and better economic prospect outside. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. And it's a challenging distinction. We know that poverty is a vulnerability. We know that poverty doesn't, and other vulnerabilities don't cause trafficking, but we know that traffickers target people who are vulnerable because they believe they're easier to coerce and certainly food insecurity would be a vulnerability that a trafficker could actually target. I appreciate your comments. Let me turn to Ms. Mindang. We have a question regarding survivors from Marie Martinez Israelite at the Human Trafficking Institute. She asks, what do you think the movement's missing in terms of economic justice for survivors? And what are your top recommendations for economic empowerment? Thank you so much. I think that economic justice is tied to access to education and mental health support. So unfortunately, I think we believe that it is just about providing good wages and jobs, but there's a huge pipeline and process of getting people into those opportunities. We need to understand that when someone is being exploited, in essence, life and learning and development is interrupted. And so the process of then rebuilding and re-entering the economic world is going to be fundamentally different. It could take learning a completely new culture and language, or it could just be adjusting to life without family connections, now being a victim of a survivor of trauma. And so we need to think about the mental health support and access to education need to go hand in hand with economic justice. My top recommendations for this would be to provide education, free education as part of restitution and reparations for survivors. I would urge, just as Ms. Forrest talked about, companies not just being held accountable for not having modern slavery, but one of the ways that they can actually contribute positively is to provide targeted pathways and entry pathways to survivors so that we're not just teaching survivors how to make jewelry and gendered employment opportunities that we are actually giving people a wide set of employment opportunities just like every other human being that fits their personalities, their skills, their affinities. And so we need to be thinking about how do we organize our systems, our economic systems to not exploit people, but actually to foster their economic long-term sustainable freedom. Min, I appreciate your emphasis on the individual looking at each survivor and what they need for economic justice as they are trying to deal with the trauma of trafficking. Thank you so much. We also have a question for Ms. Grace Forrest. It comes from Jennifer Reyes-Lay of the US Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking. Ms. Forrest, she asks, what are you seeing as the most successful practices for actually reducing trafficking in persons? The most successful thing that I have seen so far is models of entrenched collaboration that work with frontline civil society groups and connects them with higher authorities to ensure that there can be legal change driven from communities. I think the best group that does this personally is the Freedom Fund. They have proven this through the hotspot model where the theory of funding relies on collaboration. Now it looks for prevention to an intervention to a sustainable development model. Whether you're looking at human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, situations of highly exploitative child labor, even forced and child marriage, looking from a broader community education perspective, to direct interventions. I think their model is the best one I've ever seen and the best buy-in that a government could have. It shows true sustainable development, sustainable liberation and not tokenistic brash ways of liberating people. And because of groups like survivor alliance that should be foundational to all frontline efforts is driven by the expertise of survivors and driven by expertise of survivors in the communities that often have these answers to the most challenging human rights abuses that they face. Thank you, Ms. Forrest. Now we have our final question and it comes from Haley Clark of Hope International. It'll be for each of the panelists. We'll go around and let each of you answer in focusing beyond the things that have already been stated. Haley asks, what do you see as the next big issue? What's on the horizon? What's the next theme in the fight against trafficking in persons in the coming decade that hasn't already been discussed today? We'll start with Peru and Madam Attorney General. What do you see as the next big theme, next big issue in the fight against human trafficking? I believe would be how to deal with vulnerability post-pandemia because for us it's very important to have this protocol to how to certify vulnerability situation. So we have to find out which are the details that the judge and the prosecutor have to take care of to deal with these cases because people could be physically vulnerable, mentally vulnerable. So for me it's going to be what is the level of vulnerability after this pandemic and the civil reparation and restitution of the right that each one of these victims has. I think it's an issue that we have not dealt with and I think that we have to work very hard on it not only with the victims but what is going to happen after this pandemic. What we want to do is to recover lives for those peoples. I think that this pandemic has really marked a before and an after. I believe that it is now it is very stark to see how important it is to work at the international level when you have migrants, when you have different victims, it is very important to work together among countries. I believe that we were able to see, I mean, this pandemic started in March. We had 35 operations, 141 claims received, we have detained people, so. Thank you so much. I think it's an insightful theme that might happen over the next decade is what's been the impact of this virus and the world's response to the virus. And we'll be looking for more information about that as we go forward. Shifting to Sierra Leone and we'll ask the vice president there, what do you think the next critical theme is going to be over the next decade beyond the ideas that have already been shared today? Well, from the Sierra Leonean experience and given the limitations, the limitations so far in the fight against trafficking advances, I think for us, the next big issue is how do we also penalize receiving countries? We have been looking for individual traffickers. Now we need to engage countries that are receiving countries so that they know that they expense the resources to support our people to come back home, the resources to rehabilitate them, the resources to support survivors does not come from our limited revenue. It has to come from their own resources. It has to come from their own budget. So by doing that, we are forcing them also to take proactive measures in their respective countries to discourage trafficking so that it is not only Sierra Leoneans that should prosecute traffickers, but also should prosecute people, individuals that are keeping illegal migrant workers, individuals that are migrating people, individuals that are interested in importing people, individuals that are exploiting the socioeconomic vulnerability of people to bring them to their country. So some of these countries are very rich countries that are far richer than us. So a country as small as Sierra Leonean with a limited budget, I'm spending a lot of money paying air tickets, trying to integrate survivors, let them contribute to that post so that how can big countries, how like institutions like the United States, big countries like America can come and work together with smaller countries like Sierra Leone so that we can get the big guys who are receiving countries to be penalized and also to contribute to victim rehabilitation, survivor maintenance, because when these survivors come here, we take care of them with our own limited resources. They are sitting there, they have all the money, they are explaining it, how do you make that trade unprofitable? How do you make it unethical? How do you bring them to their moral responsibility so that this big country, but a small country like Sierra Leone cannot do it, unless big guys, big guys, big brothers like America have to be beside us. Multilateral institutions have to be beside us. The ECOWAS, the United Nations, these are the big players, they have to support us to make sure that even though we have decided to make trafficking in persons, a major bilateral engagement, our limitation to enforce that is really, really, really, really very limited. So the big guys, big brothers have to come, big institutions have to come, so that when we show the determination to do something, the idea to guide us, the idea to support us, the idea to help us build that framework that will also penalize these big countries. I very much appreciate that idea that making sure that receiving countries or traffickers themselves make sure that they're contributing to the restitution and care of the individuals that they've once exploited. That was similar to the theme struck by the Attorney General from Peru around restitution by traffickers. I appreciate that. We'll shift now with the same question to Ms. Grace Forrest of Walk Free. In terms of the key themes that you'll see for the next decade, what do you anticipate seeing that, beyond the comments that have already been shared? Mr. Vice President, I wanna thank you for your remarks because I could not agree more. Where we see exploitation and abuse, it needs to come back to the perpetrator, often which are the world's most powerful nations and the world's most powerful multinationals. They must be held to account the exploitation that occurs up their shores as well as domestically. And to this point, for me, I think we need to dismantle systemic discrimination and look at the overarching themes of this across the sustainable development goals. We can't respond to modern slavery effectively in isolation. It must go hand in hand with other SDGs. Actually, I think it is foundational to so many of the SDGs deliverance. When we look at dismantling systemic discrimination, we are talking about normalized exploitation in our economy, in global supply chains, in global migration pathways, and existing legal roadblocks that prevent women and girls from fully and freely participating, that prevent women and girls from being seen in the most basic way as equal. All people should be in charge of decisions relating to their body and their future. We must remove the legal roadblocks that prevent this. We must put power back into the hands of survivors and ensure their voices are amplified in the highest powers of power. And we must ensure that the perpetrators of this crime who often are not the people that we think they are are held to account on every level by citizens, by voters, and by governments. I appreciate your emphasis on holding the perpetrators accountable, including businesses and corporations that might be benefiting from having forced labor in their supply chains. We'll give the last word on this and of our panel to Min Dang at the University of Nottingham. Min? Thank you, and I appreciate you recognizing both my hats as a PhD student and survivor alliance. I think there are four things. One, I think we're going to move away from an individualized aftercare approach to a collective empowerment approach. I think we're going to need to pay attention to a group of people who I believe are stateless in limbo, in asylum situations, and who are not being claimed by either the receiving country or their home countries. We're going to need to look at community-based and local solutions that are fully integrated with national and international strategies. I think we're going to need to see bridge builders, code switchers who can effectively bring together collaborations, facilitating these networks and collaborations among civil society, academia, government, businesses, and law enforcement. I think although we have worked, there is the 4P that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought up about partnerships, and I think that we need to more effectively work across our industry boundaries to learn how social workers to talk to law enforcement and for how can we actually together focus on the goal at hand, which is ending the exploitation of human beings. If we're actually working towards the same goals, we can work across our philosophical and theoretical differences. And I think lastly, of course, I would not be me if I didn't say we're going to see the growth and expansion of meaningful survivor inclusion beyond telling our trauma narratives, but survivors and positions of decision-making power, pushing all of us to be more accountable, more human, and more committed to treating every human being's life as equal and with the dignity and respect enshrined into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thank you. Man, I think that's a great point to end on, and we're grateful for everyone who has participated today. We're grateful for Ambassador Kraft, for Executive Director Wally. I'm particularly grateful for the Deputy Secretary joining us to make an announcement about the program to end modern slavery, which I think is indicative of a larger trend, of doing big projects over a longer period of time, shaking up the way we've done international development in philanthropy, moving away from short grant cycles and small projects to try and actually work across prosecution, protection, and prevention in the same place at the same time. We're also grateful for the State Department's COVID-19 pandemic fund that the Trafficking in Persons Office has committed to placing millions towards a one-year open competition, funding NGOs and civil society organizations to address the impacts of COVID and support their efforts to combat human trafficking outside of the United States. And we invite organizations to apply for that rolling funding to help them deal with the impacts of COVID. We also want to recognize all of our panelists and are grateful for each of their participation today, their thoughtful interventions, and we hope that each of you will continue to be leaders in this fight. I want to thank each of you for joining this celebratory event of the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Polarimo Protocol. It's also the 20th anniversary of the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act. We look forward to the next 20 years to building upon what we've already done and accomplishing more in the future. We know that the millions of people that are currently separated from their freedom will be our motivation. Thank you all for attending.