The obstacles we encounter here in the United States, with laws that vary by jurisdiction, and enforcement and interpretations of those laws being even more subjective, are global problems. Our CEO learned about these shared concerns across Europe at the RENATE annual conference in Sweden, and Thomson Reuters Foundation is covering similar complaints out of Britain.

We have supported the improvement of over 30 pieces of anti-human trafficking legislation to make sure the conditions of those laws center the needs of victims while ensuring true perpetrators are held accountable. This is a slow and arduous process, and is only the beginning. Once we have those laws, we have to work together to make sure we are enforcing them in a way that is trauma-informed and supports and empowers survivors while holding exploiters accountable.

To this end, we work with over 130 different law enforcement agencies on a shared understanding of national best practices and how those practices can be adopted for local contexts. This is a similar field building and collaborative process that countries across Europe are beginning to implement as well.

Join us as we support the scaling of our National best practices to our international partner nations across Europe! Donate today.

To learn more about Britain’s efforts, read the excerpt below and click through for the full article.

Punishing businesses that fail to tackle modern slavery, providing better support for child victims, and holding the government to account topped the agenda in a review on Wednesday intended to improve Britain’s landmark anti-slavery legislation.
Hailed as a leader in the global drive to end slavery, Britain passed the 2015 Modern Slavery Act to jail traffickers for life, better protect vulnerable people, and force large companies to outline their actions to avoid using forced labour.
Yet the government tasked lawmakers last July with reviewing the law due to concerns the country was struggling to keep up to speed with the evolving crime as new investigations have risen rapidly, along with the number of victims.

A lack of convictions, limited awareness among and training of professionals, and problems around data collection have blunted Britain’s anti-slavery response, the report said.