A conference by Thomson Reuters Foundation
Trust Women delegates take action and forge tangible commitments to empower women worldwide and to fight modern-day slavery. At each conference, speakers and delegates propose innovative solutions to address social challenges. We call them actions.
Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Monique Villa and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. created a financial working group dedicated to dismantling human trafficking networks with data. The group agreed to incorporate software alerts detecting human trafficking activity in clients’ data, and to share the findings with law enforcement agencies. The group also issued international guidance for the wider financial industry.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation worked with White & Case and Grasty Quintana Majlis & Cia law firms to produce cross-border legal research on the protection of domestic workers. Visayan Forum, a leading Filipino NGO, used the research to negotiate for landmark legislation to improve the working standards of the over two million domestic workers in the country. The Magna Carta for domestic workers was successfully introduced in February 2013.
At Trust Women, Humanity United’s CEO Randy Newcomb announced an additional $50 million commitment to help fight slavery worldwide. "One of the greatest challenges of this era is the abolition of slavery globally in all of its forms," Newcomb told the conference delegates. Humanity United is Pierre and Pam Omidyar’s philanthropic initiative dedicated to building peace and advancing freedom.
With support from the Freedom Fund, the Thomson Reuters Foundation produced and launched a comprehensive legal report to drive action against human trafficking and slavery in India. The study provides practical and innovative strategies to strengthen the level of prosecutions across the country, and to ensure victims receive the right legal support. The Freedom Fund is implementing and scaling some of the strategies set out in the report.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation and the International Association of Women Judges produced and released an innovative report on “sextortion,” a form of corruption in which sex, rather than money, is the currency of the bribe. The study is a powerful tool to raise public awareness of sextortion, and to effectively support legislators, advocates and citizens in the fight to end this shameful practice worldwide.
Martina Vandenberg, Founder and President of the Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center, committed to expand the network of existing pro bono lawyers to pursue individual lawsuits on behalf of victims of trafficking and forced labour in the United States. The Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center trains attorneys to represent - pro bono - trafficking victims to help survivors rebuild their lives.
Nazdeek, a human rights NGO, announced an advocacy campaign to raise the daily wage and improve the working conditions of the labourers working in the tea gardens of Assam, India. As a result of the initiative, Assam’s Chief Minister called for the tea workers to be paid the minimum wage of 169 Rs/day. That has not yet happened, but the workers’ salary has been increased from 94Rs to 115Rs/day. Nazdeek’s campaign continues.
AEquitas has partnered with Westlaw to build a digital tool aggregating international law, data and research related to sexual violence prosecution. AEquitas is a US-based organization offering prosecutors technical assistance in cases of violence against women; Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw is the world’s leading legal research service. While still in development, the new tool will serve as a public resource around the world.
