Human trafficking for sexual, economic or labour exploitation is a global threat present in all regions of the world and in a great variety of sectors from the Thai fishing industry to domestic servitude in diplomatic households.

The Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) is one of the international actors tackling human trafficking at the global level. Its Office to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, created in 2003, has pursued various initiatives focusing on prevention, prosecution, protection of victims and partnership with other organizations. Its work has contributed to strengthening the response of its member states to trafficking, pursuing better data collection, more effective enforcement of existing legislation, training initiatives and capacity building programmes. 

The seminar will present emerging trends that the OSCE Office has identified and some of the strategies developed to respond to them. The intersection between technology and trafficking, the risks of trafficking in the supply chain and the work of the OSCE to prevent domestic servitude in diplomatic households will be discussed during the event.

Speaker biography

Valiant (Val) Richey is the Acting Coordinator for the Office of the Special Representative and Coordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He oversees the day-to-day operations of the office and assists the 57 OSCE countries in combating human trafficking. Prior to joining the OSCE, Val worked for thirteen years as prosecutor in Seattle handling hundreds of sexual assault, child exploitation and human trafficking cases. In this position, he helped pioneer new operations and technology-based efforts to combat trafficking. For the last five years, he coordinated a group of law enforcement, NGOs, academics, service providers, philanthropists, and policy makers focused on the eradication of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking in Washington State. This coalition launched innovative projects for public awareness, identification and recovery of victims of exploitation, and deterrence of the demand for sex trafficking. Prior to working as a prosecutor, he managed a program for legislative policy and fiscal analysis. Val has a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Political Science from Boston University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Washington.

Established in 2003, the Office of Special Representative and Coordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings helps the 57 OSCE participating States to develop and implement effective policies on the ground. The Office promotes a victim-centred and human rights-based approach in protecting victims.

Discussant biography

Dr Rosana Garciandia is Research Associate and Visiting Lecturer of Public International Law at King’s College London. Her work focuses on a project on State responsibility for modern slavery (PI Dr Philippa Webb, funded by the British Academy’s Tackling the UK’s International Challenges Programme). The project, conducted in cooperation with the UN University, explores the involvement of States or their organs in modern slavery cases and analyses the international framework of State responsibility to determine whether it is possible to hold States accountable in such situations and what the challenges of that approach are.

Dr Garciandia joined the Dickson Poon School of Law in 2018 after having acquired extensive experience working at international organisations in the areas of EU Law, human rights and international anti-corruption law. She was the Secretary General of the European Law Institute, an organisation working to improve the quality of law in Europe. She also worked as Legal Research Officer at the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) focusing mainly on socio-economic rights. At the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, she contributed and continues to contribute with her work to the review of the implementation of the UN Convention Against Corruption by States Parties. She was previously Lecturer in Public International Law and EU Law at University of Murcia in her native Spain.

She holds a doctorate in Law (PhD) from University of Navarra School of Law, and has been a visiting researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the Graduate Institute and Queen Mary University of London. She was the Coordinator of the Africa Working Group of the Solicitor’s International Human Rights Group (London, 2012) and is a fellow of the European Society of International Law, of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and of the European Law Institute.