Parliamentary Task Force on Human Trafficking

The Parliamentary Task Force on Human Trafficking is a subcommittee of the Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum (PISF) and was formed in the fall of 2021 after conversations surrounding human trafficking at the Forum in Budapest, Hungary. It is the first consortium of this kind to focus on the collaboration of Parliamentarians, lived-experience experts, and government leaders with the shared mission of combatting the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, human trafficking. Our common goal is to make our world more secure through combatting human trafficking at the policy level through parliamentary awareness, collaboration, and engagement.

Human trafficking is the second largest criminal enterprise in the world, and there are currently more human trafficking victims on the planet than at any other time in history. Additionally, human trafficking generates more than $150 billion annually and funds every adversarial nation and movement threatening the security of our world today. Human trafficking is unique among human rights abuses because local and regional escalation not only exploits millions of people in labor trafficking, sex trafficking, organ harvesting, forced marriage and other forms of modern slavery, but it also funds and exacerbates global violence, including terrorism, armed conflict, religious persecution, gender apartheid, and environmental degradation.

The Task Force is a platform for convening law makers and leaders from a variety of perspectives to achieve this goal in several ways. First, we meet virtually four times per year to collaborate and discuss actionable policy solutions and legislation focused on the prevention, protection, prosecution and partnership elements of combatting human trafficking that can be implemented in our respective countries or supported collectively. Additionally, the Task Force provides expert speakers at in-person PISF forums throughout the year, thus tying the topic into the larger conversation about global security and educating legislators throughout the world about human trafficking. Finally, the Task Force provides briefings, statements, targeted campaigns, letters, and shares model legislation on various aspects of combatting human trafficking.

Increased awareness and engagement about stopping human trafficking by government leaders as well as collective organization on policies and statements surrounding this topic is critical to creating widespread systemic change. Our belief is that through collaboration we can accomplish more.