Human Trafficking Is Everyone's Problem: The Climate and Development Connections We Keep Missing
About the session
Human trafficking does not happen in isolation.
It thrives where people have fewer choices and fewer protections.
Climate shocks can destroy livelihoods and force families to move. Conflict displaces communities beyond familiar systems of support. Poverty narrows economic choices. Gender inequality can increase exposure to exploitation. And people without documentation, legal status, trusted networks, or access to basic services may have little recourse when an offer of work, transport, housing, or assistance becomes coercive.
These are not simply background conditions.
They are part of the environment in which exploitation becomes possible.
And they are conditions that the climate, development, and humanitarian communities are already working to address.
Yet trafficking is often treated as a separate specialist issue.
Climate displacement conversations may focus on where people move without asking enough about the exploitation risks they encounter along the way. Food-system conversations can address livelihoods and supply chains without confronting the labor exploitation those systems may contain. Migration discussions can focus on expanding legal pathways while paying less attention to people for whom those pathways remain inaccessible.
Meanwhile, organizations working directly on trafficking, survivor support, and prevention can operate in a different institutional world from the climate, development, humanitarian, and philanthropic organizations shaping many of the conditions around vulnerability.
What would change if we stopped treating trafficking as someone else's problem?
This session will connect those worlds.
It will explore how displacement, poverty, gender inequality, legal exclusion, and weakened community protections can intersect with trafficking risk, including the particular vulnerabilities that Indigenous women and children may encounter when displacement separates them from land, community networks, documentation, and familiar systems of protection.
It will also move beyond vulnerability.
What does effective prevention look like before exploitation occurs? What can we learn from practitioners working on interception and disruption? How should survivor-centered care be designed and scaled? Where can technology help, and where can it introduce new risks? What partnerships are required across borders and institutions?
And critically: what should climate, development, and humanitarian organizations be doing differently if trafficking prevention is already part of the environment in which they work?
Discussion Group Leaders
Gina de la Chesnaye is Executive Director at The Nachan Project, advancing community-led protection and trauma-responsive approaches for Indigenous Karimojong women and children affected by violence, exploitation, and family separation.
James Clarry is CEO at Justice & Care, advancing systemic approaches to combat human trafficking and exploitation through organizational leadership, partnerships, and survivor-centered action.
Kelsey Morgan is CEO & Co-Founder at EverFree, advancing human-centered approaches that restore agency and dignity for people affected by violence, exploitation, and abuse.
Mandeep Kaur Sanghera OBE is a human rights advocate at Female Advocacy Foundation International, advancing gender equality, migrant rights, social justice, and the empowerment of women and girls globally.
What to expect
A cross-sector conversation connecting anti-trafficking practitioners and survivor advocates with people working on climate, displacement, gender, Indigenous rights, humanitarian response, technology, philanthropy, and development.
The discussion will connect direct anti-trafficking work, including prevention, interception, survivor care, and disruption, with the structural conditions that can make people more vulnerable to exploitation in the first place.
Rather than asking every organization to become an anti-trafficking specialist, the session will ask something more practical: where can trafficking prevention and survivor protection be integrated into work organizations are already doing?
The aim is to make connections that rarely happen in the same room and identify where collaboration across sectors could prevent exploitation earlier.
Who this is for
This session is for anti-trafficking organizations, survivor advocacy groups, climate and displacement practitioners, gender-based violence specialists, Indigenous rights advocates, humanitarian organizations, funders, technologists working on survivor-centered systems, and anyone in the climate or development community who has not yet considered how their work intersects with trafficking risk and prevention.
What you will get out of it
A framework for understanding trafficking in relation to displacement, poverty, gender inequality, legal exclusion, and other structural conditions rather than solely as a criminal justice issue
Ground-level perspectives on how displacement and the loss of community and legal protections can intersect with exploitation risk
Insights from practitioners working on prevention, interception, survivor support, and disruption across different contexts
A clearer understanding of what survivor-centered systems require as they move beyond individual cases toward greater scale
Practical ways climate, development, humanitarian, and philanthropic organizations can incorporate trafficking prevention into work they are already doing