Several months back, the two of us took part in a group discussion with anti-trafficking professionals about the ways anti-trafficking must course-correct to meet the present moment. We found ourselves once again beating the “cross-movement partnership” drum. We said we do not work in any one movement – our work to end exploitation must partner with related movements like those focusing on feminism, labour rights, migration, child rights, and anti-colonial systems. This is a core principle of the Collective Threads Initiative, a project dedicated to fostering movements for social change that we co-founded in 2024.
As we spoke, another attendee nodded in agreement. “Yes,” she said. “They still have money.”
It was a short sentence, spoken off the cuff and maybe later made that person cringe. Yet it exposed something about the way the anti-trafficking sector operates. It is largely dependent on development funding, struggles to see the intertwined nature of oppression, and struggles to practice the intertwined path to liberation. Anti-trafficking engages with other movements in transactional, self-serving ways. It seeks to train them rather than partner with them, and to attach itself to funding streams wherever they are found.
