A panel of experts advocated for international policy efforts against modern-day slavery and human trafficking at a Georgetown University event featuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Dec. 2.

At the event, Clinton was joined by experts including Evelyn Chumbow, the advocacy and survivor leadership director of the Human Trafficking Legal Center and a first-hand trafficking survivor, and Melanne Verveer, the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS), an initiative centring on the critical, untapped role of women in world politics and security. The panelists urged bipartisan support for anti-trafficking legislation, detailed the role of education in fostering awareness and praised the strength of investigative journalism in crippling forced labour operations in global supply chains. 

Clinton, who serves as GIWPS’s honorary founding chair, said the summit was important to celebrate integral anti-trafficking policy and envision future progress. 

“Today we are here to mark a milestone. It has been twenty-five years since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Palermo Protocol set the foundation for the modern global fight against human trafficking and forced labour,” Clinton said at the event. “Now, both anniversaries are moments for reflection and clarity. What did we learn, what did we build, and what must we do now in the next twenty-five years to make even greater progress and finally end modern slavery?”

The 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) aims to combat human trafficking both in the United States and internationally. The act establishes several interagency task forces to monitor abuses and enhances legal prosecution measures to hold perpetrators accountable. The 2000 Palermo Protocol is a broader, legally-binding instrument adopted by the United Nations to globally define trafficking and criminalize the act in all of the 185 party states.

Verveer, who is the former U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, said the prevalence of human trafficking and forced labor as a global crime should serve as an impetus for continued advocacy. 

“Human trafficking continues to be a global scourge, and our work must continue now more than ever,” Verveer said at the event. “The perpetrators, criminal networks, are engaged in a multi-billion dollar industry that is nothing less than modern-day slavery.”

Clinton said she advocated for anti-trafficking policies such as the TVPA while serving as First Lady of the United States. 

“We pushed for a robust, bipartisan law that would prevent trafficking,” Clinton said. “Prevention, prosecution, protection — we were looking at ways to address the issue in its complexity. We wanted comprehensive legislation that would enable us to go after it in all its variations. Those three ‘Ps’ became the backbone of the TVPA.” 

Delani Pecchioli (GRD ’25), who attended the event, said the panelists’ work and discussion motivated her to think more about advocacy.

“I’m feeling energized, inspired, also humbled,” Pecchioli told The Hoya. “To hear from people that are on the ground and doing this work everyday is just so nice, especially seeing how some of these systems are being dismantled and how difficult this work is already on a good day.”

Clinton said human trafficking is a critical issue with immense history, outlining the global struggle to recognize the act as a legitimate crime against humanity. 

“Advocates had long raised alarms about what they were seeing, particularly in conflict zones and in places with great poverty,” Clinton said. “Women and girls were being bought and sold, trafficked across borders, forced into servitude — and it was treated as an invisible crime, and in many places it wasn’t as a crime at all, visible or invisible. It was literally hidden in plain sight as one would say, and by that I mostly meant they just didn’t want to see it.”

Chumbow, drawing on her experience as a survivor of human trafficking, said modern politics needs to prioritize victims’ humanity.

“I was brought into this country at age nine, and I never thought that I would become a victim of child forced labor right here in Maryland, not far from the White House capital,” Chumbow said at the event. “Me being here and sharing my tears is not for you to feel sorry for me, but for you to take action. When we are talking about policies, let’s talk about policies that help support us, really see us as human. So if you want to create policies that help me, you do so by talking to me.”

Clinton said human trafficking, while often dismissed, is a global issue.

“Trafficking thrives in the shadows and it can be easily dismissed as something that happens to someone else, somewhere else,” Clinton said. “But that’s just not the case — trafficking happens in every nation on Earth. It is a crime that knows no borders.”