World Day against Trafficking in Persons 2021: Ensuring Inclusion of Victims and Survivors’ Voices in All Anti-Trafficking Efforts 

On the occasion of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, ODIHR and its partners are organizing an online event entitled "Ensuring Inclusion of Victims and Survivors’ Voices in All Anti-Trafficking Efforts, including in the National Referral Mechanisms". 

The event will provide a platform to raise awareness of the need to include victims and survivors’ voices and perspectives in all anti-trafficking initiatives, to ensure that the victims' needs, including those specific to their gender, are at the centre of every effort to counter the crime. 

The event will showcase the advice, guidance and recommendations of the International Survivors of Trafficking Advisory Council (ISTAC) on this topic, while fostering the growth of national and international survivor networks and survivor leadership.  

This will also be an occasion for ODIHR to present a preview of its forthcoming updated National Referral Mechanisms (NRM) Handbook. The Handbook provides a guidance model which governments within the OSCE region and beyond can adapt and apply to ensure a human rights-based, gender-sensitive, trauma-informed and victim- and survivor-centred approach to combating trafficking in human beings. 

In addition, the event will feature the launch of the Virtual Museum on Feminist Grassroots Action by Apne Aap Women Worldwide. The first exhibition will display the work of anti-trafficking NGOs during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on survivor leaders from ISTAC and Apne Aap’s #1MillionMeals food drive. This museum will create an online space to explore the gender dimension of trafficking in human beings and be a living legacy of the field work of anti-trafficking NGOs during the pandemic and beyond. 

The event will also inform the work of the Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons (ICAT) on fostering victim- and survivor-centred approaches to trafficking in persons and provide the audience with an overview of ongoing work in that regard. 

Agenda and participants 

Welcome remarks:

• Kateryna Ryabiko, First Deputy Director, Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
• John Brandolino, Director of Division for Treaty Affairs, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), as 2021 ICAT Co-chair 
• Gillian Triggs, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, UNHCR, as 2021 ICAT Co-chair 
• Ruchira Gupta, Founder President Apne Aap International 

Keynote address by AnnaLynne McCord, actress, writer, director and activist, founder of THE LOVE STORM

Tatiana Kotlyarenko, ODIHR Adviser on Anti-Trafficking Issues, will introduce the upcoming NRM handbook, and Ruchira Gupta will launch the Virtual Museum. 

The event will also feature panel presentations and a Q&A session with members of the International Survivors of Trafficking Advisory Council (ISTAC): 

• Shandra Woworuntu 

• Jerome Elam  

• Daniela De Luca 

• Kendall Alaimo 

Registration 

Those interested can register here. 

Event partners 

The Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons (ICAT) is a policy forum mandated to improve coordination among UN agencies and other relevant international organizations to facilitate an integrated approach to preventing and combating trafficking in persons. ICAT was established in 2007, pursuant to the General Assembly Resolution 61/180, to enhance cooperation and coordination among the international community and facilitate a holistic and comprehensive approach to the problem of trafficking in persons. In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 64/293, endorsing the United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons and urging all responsible UN entities to coordinate their efforts to fight trafficking in persons effectively and to protect the human rights of its victims, including via ICAT and the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT).   

Apne Aap Women Worldwide is a US and India based organization that works to end human trafficking by educating children of prostituted women, filing cases against traffickers, organizing victims and survivors of sex-trafficking to access legal, social, economic and political rights and advocating for better laws and policies. It has consultative status in the UN and in its two decades has empowered more than 20,000 women and girls exit systems of prostitution. It has helped in the passage of India’s anti-trafficking law, Section 370 I.P.C and published the first manual for law enforcement to address the demand for human trafficking. During the Covid pandemic, it ran the world’s biggest food drive, #1MillionMeals for victims of sex-trafficking and their children in India that provided dry rations worth 12 million meals to more than a quarter million beneficiaries.