The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include ending modern slavery and human trafficking by 2030. It’s a daunting challenge, but Tom Hall, Head of Global Philanthropy for the financial institution UBS, has some compelling ideas on how to achieve it.

* Women rescued from trafficking are too often returning to “the life.”
* High-frequency buyers may be incarcerated, but too often, when they get out, they go right back to doing it again.
* Traffickers were often themselves abused as children.

The problem of human trafficking is big and consequential. Whether you’re reporting on it or are inspired to get involved.

* Ending human trafficking can’t happen when addressing only individual parts of the problem.
* Well-established tools and techniques exist for combatting human trafficking on a systems level.
* The agriculture industry, with thin profit margins, relies on human trafficking.

Trafficked individuals can prove to be a great resource if handled kindly and with finesse.

Monica McGrail is the Marketing Manager for Keystone Outdoor Advertising, and she as she points out, “The unconscious mind can process 11 million pieces of information per second, and most of the time you don’t know you’re doing it.”

Almost daily, Alicia Corrado confronts a great mystery. She’s the Executive Director of the North Star Initiative, an organization helping survivors of sex trafficking. The mystery is, how can survivors of sex trafficking be so unimaginably resilient?

* The risk factors for human trafficking have increased since COVID-19.
* More people online, more labor traffickers exploiting the need for PPE, more lost jobs all mean additional people for traffickers to prey on.

* Homelessness and joblessness make transgender individuals particularly vulnerable to human traffickers.
* If a transgender person is incarcerated, possibly for commercial sale of sex, the prison experience is likely to be exceptionally nightmarish.

* Children in foster care are at increased risk for trafficking.
* Removing a child from his or her parents can be a balancing act between dangers at home and possible danger of trafficking.
* In some cases, the trauma of removal can be as devastating as the crisis that led to the removal.