This year’s edition of the Freedom From Slavery Forum was held in Marrakech from the 27th to the 30th of March.
The event was a chance to bring together UN and Government officials, civil society representatives, researchers, and human trafficking survivors alongside 75 leaders from 30 different countries.
The Forum’s website describes the event as a “prestigious gathering of anti-slavery leaders from around the world […] designed to create a collegial space to coalesce, create partnerships, discuss promising practices, and develop a shared agenda for action.”
This year’s edition focused on regional priorities, bringing different perspectives and areas of expertise from movement leaders and modern slavery survivors. One of the ways the Forum aims to do that is by empowering grassroots movements to gain momentum and coordinate their efforts.
The main objective of the event was to draft a coherent, relevant, and strategic plan to fight modern slavery, according to the organizers. In addition, the debates and panel discussions (in which many Moroccan officials participated on the second day) will be used to frame a global agenda, to be enacted on the regional and local levels from 2022 to 2025.
Modern slavery is a multibillion-dollar business ranging from forced labor to human trafficking and forced marriages. According to the International Labor Organization, there were an estimated 40.3m people in modern slavery today in 2016, 25% of which were children. Moreover, some forms of modern slavery are also gender-biased.
Women and girls, for example, account for 99% of victims in the sex trafficking industry and 58% in all other forms combined
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