Human Trafficking – The Child Connection

Interrupting This Global Business

Human Trafficking is a global business worth $150 billion annually. The only way to conquer such financial power is to compete with it. One of the best ways is to create incentive to move to a different way of doing things and to take away the market share. The path is to not just tell a better brand story but to be a better brand story.

Why would any business want to do that?

The Trust Economy.

Have you ever stayed at a hotel and used too many towels? Did you leave them on the bathroom floor without thinking about it? Did you leave all the coffee out in a mess, not empty the fridge, or put things in the trash? It’s not uncommon to behave badly when you are an anonymous guest. But when you stay at an Airbnb or a rental home, you behave differently. You would never do those same things because you wouldn’t want anyone to know. There is a trust system in place: not only do you rate the home, but the owners also rate you. Integrity is on the line. Reputations are on the line. And the one people care about most is their own.

The Trust Economy Shapes Our Decision-Making

The economy has shifted in this digital world and emerging businesses like Airbnb^[10] and Lyft take full advantage of it. Larger brands have had to accept how trust is being built now: No longer from the top down, trust is being built via social networks: “peer to peer.” Trust is not a vague, centralized relationship – it’s personal and powerful. If you are not working to build your business’ trust with the consumer and demonstrate it within your businesses then the new global economy might just leave you behind.

“40% of respondents used information from social media to make investing decisions. Of those respondents under the age of 40 years old that number was 60%,” according to a recent study from Sysomos.^[11]

With this new way to make decisions comes a new sense of collaboration, putting the highest price on trust and transparency. Trust has become part of the social ethos for building million dollar businesses. Trust is changing the social fabric of our lives and how we decide to wield our buying and investing power.

Harnessing the Trust Economy for Good

On January 15, 2018, Laurence D. Fink, founder, and CEO of the largest investment firm in the world BlackRock, wrote an open letter^[12] to business leaders urging companies to do more than just make profits. “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

Businesses need to make profits and need to gain a foothold in the trust economy. They will want to be seen as having integrity and a reputation for transparency in the fight against human—particularly child—trafficking.

“If we can get global businesses to become transparent about their supply chain; to confirm there is no human trafficking or child trafficking used from their suppliers and contractors; to provide recognized and globally-accepted education, certification, and awareness to all key personnel at all levels; then we can make a significant change for the prevention, protection, and prosecution of Human Trafficking,” said Jax Harrison of StopchildtrafficK.

Just imagine if Starbucks not only declared fair trade equity on all of its products but also required in the supply chain a globally-recognized certification that clearly states no child trafficking was used to the third-level contractors. Then imagine that Starbucks moved to train and certify all of their supply managers to look for this, requiring that they kept their certificates up to date. Imagine they went two steps further and trained their Store Managers to recognize and report a suspected child and human trafficking situation. Envision Starbucks displayed a globally-recognized symbol in more than 24,000 stores across 75 countries with globally-recognized certified education and awareness to prevent child trafficking.

Would you support Starbucks or Peet’s, which has no such certification?

Daily Impact Investing

Learn more about the $9 trillion impact of social good investment strategies:

Universal Systems and Standards for Global Use

International standards and education of law enforcement, government agencies, and global businesses to aid in the prevention of human trafficking would increase the prosecutions and convictions of human trafficking perpetrators around the globe.

Good secure digital identity solutions would aid in the prevention of human trafficking, preventing traffickers from holding documentation and enabling the illegal passage of minors.

One secure digital platform could provide education, certification, reporting, mapping, data collection, and resources to better enable prevention, successful prosecutions, convictions, and recovery of trafficked humans.

Raising global public awareness of standards and education of what to look for in both the private sector and enforcement will result in a trust economy with private citizens who will begin seeking out those entities that are transparent and certified in anti-human trafficking.

Standard training and certification could be done online in secure platforms, tailored to each type of law enforcement, government agencies, and global businesses.
The resulting levels of certification could become a global standard that ALL agencies involved in the fight against human trafficking would recognize and participate with.

Any global business that receives the certification would be transparently saying to its customers that it does not partake in Human Trafficking and that it has trained its key employees to recognize and report on human trafficking. It would include the supply chain and the customer service protocols. This would create value and advantage for that business with its customers in today’s trust economy.

Any global business that receives the certification would be transparently saying to its customers that it does not partake in Human Trafficking and that it has trained its key employees to recognize and report on human trafficking. It would include the supply chain and the customer service protocols. This would create value and advantage for that business with its customers in today’s trust economy.

Through StopChildTraffick.org, Jax Harrison and Bernie Gravett are working to create the collaboration of business and agencies using technology, education, and certification to create one global standard for the prevention and prosecution of child trafficking.

Jax Harrison is the CEO of JaxHarrisonNetwork, a Global Ambassador for Inspiring Rarebirds, and a board member of the Justice Project of Kansas City, a human rights initiative advocating for and supporting system-challenged women in need.

Bernie Gravett, Director of Specialist Policing Consultancy, is an expert in countering organized crime at an international level, training governments and organizations around the world in anti-human trafficking.

[1] https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html

[2]https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_575479.pdf

[3] https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/human-trafficking-numbers

[4]https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?src=ind&mtdsg_no=xviii-12-a&chapter=18&lang=en

[5] https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/protocoltraffickinginpersons.aspx

[6] https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/intro/UNTOC.html

[7] https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/protocoltraffickinginpersons.aspx

[8]The Palermo Protocols are a globally accepted body of standards defining Human Trafficking however they do not cover the education, training, and certification to prevent Human Trafficking.

[9] UK MSA 2015 is an attempt to force businesses and agencies to become transparent

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/30/pdfs/ukpga_20150030_en.pdf

[10] You can see the Airbnb founder’s TedX talk on Trust here.

[11]https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/charles-schwab-2017-nt/the-trust-economy/1290/

[12]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/business/dealbook/blackrock-laurence-fink-letter.html