Program recorded Wednesday, June 19, 2024 at 12:00 PM ET

 

Human trafficking, also referred to as modern slavery, is a heinous crime that has shown no signs of abating. Throughout the world, human trafficking in all its various forms continues despite national, regional, and international instruments such as the United Nations Transnational Organized Crime Convention’s Palermo Protocols, which focus on trafficking and smuggling.

While there is a clear need to strengthen existing laws worldwide, victims of human trafficking continue to come forward to make a difference. This has led to increased visibility of different victim groups, initiatives considering different types of trafficking, and movements towards protecting victims of human trafficking, such as the Non-Punishment Principle. Additionally, with the rise of artificial intelligence, the internet has emerged as a new battleground requiring strong measures to safeguard people from online exploitation and scams.

Join this international panel of lawyers, academics, and investigators as they discuss their work in combatting human trafficking.

PANELISTS

Professor Parosha Chandran is a human rights barrister and Professor of Practice in Modern Slavery Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, where she teaches her own Masters of Law course.

With almost three decades of legal expertise in representing victims of human rights and human trafficking violations in their national and international court cases, alongside an unparalleled legal practice in providing high-level legal advice to organisations, Parliaments and States on trafficking and modern slavery laws, she is a multi-award winning, world-leading expert on the law relating to human trafficking, including for the United Nations and the Council of Europe.

Her landmark work and cases to protect victims and to require legal accountability by States for their safeguarding failures have given rise to a wealth of trafficking precedents in court judgments with far-reaching global influence in the anti-trafficking field, including in matters as diverse as asylum, non-punishment protection, criminal, sexual and child exploitation, slavery, servitude, forced labour, compensation and the legal accountability of diplomats for human trafficking.

A recipient of the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Hero Award 2015 for her work to establish the rule of law for trafficking victims and for her “unparalleled legal representation of victims of modern slavery”, one of her cases recently set the European Court of Human Right’s landmark judgment on non-punishment in 2021 and, acting as Counsel on behalf of the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking, she contributed to the UK Supreme Court’s judgment in 2022, the first in the world to recognise the right of a trafficked domestic migrant worker to bring compensation claims against a serving diplomat.

She is the General Editor and co-author of the Human Trafficking Handbook, the world’s first multidisciplinary textbook on tackling trafficking (LexisNexis, 2011), a co- author of the Council of Europe’s comprehensive e-learning course on Combating Human Trafficking (2018, 2024 editions), the author of the Model Law on Orphanage Trafficking (Lumos, 2021), a member of the expert working group on orphanage trafficking of the Interparliamentary Taskforce on Human Trafficking and an expert advisor on sports trafficking for the NGO, Mission 89. She has contributed to numerous high-level publications on trafficking, including for the OHCHR, UNODC, OSCE, and has provided extensive training and legal advice to parliamentarians of Commonwealth States supported by the British Parliament’s Modern Slavery Project.

She brings cases, teaches, advises, publishes, provides legal training and supports civil society organisations that work towards protecting victims of trafficking the world over.

Cara Rose currently serves as the Unit Chief over Programs which encompasses the Training and Outreach and Victim Protection sections at The Department of Homeland Security‘s Center for Countering Human Trafficking (CCHT). Prior to that she was assigned as the Section Chief over Training and Outreach at the CCHT, organizing and fulfilling training requests both domestically and internationally. Prior to transitioning into her roles at the CCHT, she was the Human Exploitation Group Supervisor at the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Office in Baltimore, Maryland. She has 22 years of federal law enforcement experience including working as a U.S. Border Patrol Agent in Yuma, Arizona and Detroit, Michigan before joining HSI in 2008.

Ms. Rose has worked human smuggling and human trafficking investigations as a Special Agent in both Detroit and Maryland’s Eastern Shore areas of responsibility prior to becoming a supervisor. Since 2008, Ms. Rose has been committed to providing victim protection assistance and human trafficking outreach to law enforcement, non-governmental organizations, medical professionals, social service providers, and other community and religious organizations while also actively investigating and supervising cases of human exploitation and other Homeland Security-related offenses.

Joseph Andrew Kalie Sesay is a Sierra Leonean working as State Counsel and Customary Law Officer in the Law Officers’ Department, Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice, Sierra Leone. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree specializing in International Relations, a Bachelor’s Degree in Laws with Honours (LL.B Hons.) from the Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, and a Barrister-at-Law Degree (B.L) from the Sierra Leone Law School, where he was called to the Bar in November 2012. Prior to joining the Law Officers’ Department, he worked as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of Sierra Leone as a Criminal Defence Counsel and later as a Consultant Prosecutor, prosecuting sexual offenses and financial crimes. He also served as Senior Trial Monitor at the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone and the National Courts, where he looked at the conduct of proceedings, basic procedural improprieties, substantive legal issues in decisions, etc. He was also engaged in the analysis of legacy and residual issues as part of the Special Court’s winding-up strategy.

Mr. Sesay has been practicing for an uninterrupted eleven years and has a wealth of experience in financial investigations, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, public health-related crimes, and human trafficking, having attended various national and international training in intellectual property enforcement, financial investigative techniques, money laundering, and other public health crimes.

Presently, Joseph serves as State Counsel and also doubles as the Customary Law Officer. He is in charge of proffering legal opinions and prosecuting all criminal offenses in the High Court of Sierra Leone Holden in the North-East Region of the Republic of Sierra Leone.

Prof. Jill E.B. Coster van Voorhout is a Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Associate Professor in (International) Criminal Law and Human Rights at Maastricht University. She publishes extensively in interdisciplinary fields, including improving financial investigations into human trafficking. As Project Director and Principal Investigator of the five-year project COMCRIM, she leads a public-private research consortium of more than 28 scholars from more than nine disciplines who jointly examine the systemic factors of organized crime. In COMCRIM, public and private partners collaborate to detect such crime using unconventional data sources such as banking records, follow the money, and discern criminal networks, patterns, and effects. Intended results are more proactive, evidence-based interventions that foster the resilience of democracy and the rule of law (COMCRIM and on NWO’s website, under budget range of 2-5 million euros, NWA-ORC).

She is also Research Lead on Crime and Terrorism at the Amsterdam-based Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).

Sean Bardoo serves as the Human Rights Ambassador for Queen Maria Amor. He is an expert with extensive experience combating sex and human trafficking in the United States and globally through education, policies, and procedures. His specialization includes the Middle Eastern,  African, and American regions, with involvement in countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, the United States, Brazil, India, and Nepal. Sean was honored as Man of the Year UAE-Dubai 2023 at the WCH Royal Summit.

He has been recognized for his efforts, including by the Mayors of Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts, for rescuing a young woman from Ohio who was in danger of being killed while being sex trafficked. He has spoken at various events and forums worldwide and has assisted numerous countries, agencies, governments, and law enforcement in developing a better understanding of the issues and solutions associated with combatting human trafficking. Additionally, he organizes campaign events to raise awareness and conducts workshops to educate and inform people about the sex and human trafficking industry.

MODERATOR: Deniz Tamer, NY attorney, MTICC, Inc.