International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference 2026: A Summary of Content, Important Presentations, and Insights
By David Corliss, PhD
Published October 26, 2026
Introduction
Each year in late September, the International Human Trafficking and Social Justice (IHTSJ) Conference brings together leading scholars and practitioners in the anti-trafficking community to the latest research, new insights, and advocacy channels, and hosts group discussions. This month’s GAHTS blog post takes an in-depth look at the conference, what it offers, and how to get involved.
The IHTSJ Conference is the oldest and largest anti-trafficking conference in the world. It was founded in 2004 to create a collaborative space for research, advocacy, and program development. Interdisciplinary by design, all areas and interests in research, practice, and advocacy are represented. It was originally focused just on human trafficking, Then, in 2015, the mission was expanded to include broader social justice issues, acknowledging that exploitation cannot exist without or be separated from systems of injustice around the world. Over its history, the conference has welcomed thousands of participants representing 75 countries and all 50 U.S. states. It is hosted as a virtual three-day event, utilizing a comprehensive web application to maximize global accessibility and ensure that researchers, direct service providers, and activists can engage without geographical barriers.
The conference’s core mission is to bring together the global community to learn, connect, and collaborate to combat human trafficking and promote social justice. Inclusion is an important guiding principle, prioritizing diversity of background in the presenters and audience as well as types of research, practice, and experience. This commitment to an inclusive conference creates an environment where participants from widely different professional and cultural backgrounds can share evidence-based strategies and survivor-centric methodologies. Attendees include academics and researchers presenting quantitative and qualitative data on exploitation trends. Practitioners at the conference include social workers, counselors, healthcare providers, and legal professionals. Conference attendees have many opportunities to earn continuing education credits. The conference community also includes law enforcement and criminal justice professionals, contributing their expertise in criminal actions, prosecution, policy, and victim identification. The conference also recognizes excellence through initiatives like the Social Justice Leader Award, which honors people and organizations driving tangible, community-level change.
I have been an active participant in the conference since 2017, so I hope to be able to share some of my personal, first-hand experiences and impressions in this blog.
The 23rd Annual IHTSJ Conference
Each year, the conference features over 100 live and on-demand webinars covering both fundamental and emerging realities in the field. The content is organized into tracks designed to transition research directly into grassroots and systemic action.
In 2026, topics included:
Sex and Labor Trafficking Dynamics: Deep dives into specialized areas like domestic urban sex trafficking, familial child trafficking, and the operation of illicit massage businesses.
Systemic Vulnerabilities: Analysis of how housing instability, poverty, child welfare failures, and marginalized identities exacerbate victim exploitation.
Corporate and Legal Accountability: Sessions highlighting victim-centered civil litigation against corporations or industries—such as hospitality and tech—that knowingly or recklessly benefit from forced labor.
Emerging Intersections: Cutting-edge panels exploring how modern advancements and global shifts affect the field, including the role of artificial intelligence in online recruitment and the impacts of climate change on forced migration and labor.
One of the most important aspects of the IHTSJ Conference is that it is entirely virtual. Presentations are started off with a live introduction followed by previously recorded content. As a presenter, I always watch the Q&A during this time to answer questions online in real time. Once the recorded section is completed, each session goes live again for questions and discussions. The recording from all sessions - not just the ones you attended - are available online to all registered attendees for three weeks after the conference ends. This makes it possible to view the recording for a session presented at the same time as another one you watched live. The virtual nature also manifests a critically important point of social justice, making the conference available to people without resources to travel to a conference in person or are from from parts of the world where a visa to visit the U.S. is difficult or impossible to obtain. The virtual format of the conference makes it truly global, enabling both presenters and attendees throughout the world to benefit and to have their own content included.
Within the wide diversity of conference attendees, one group stands out as especially important. Lived experience participants courageously bring their unique perspective without which no program can be truly well informed. Just as one example, my own particular research uses statistical analysis to identify risk factors, guide policy, and help to identify victims. While this might seem far removed from lived experience experts and their advocates, their voice is a cornerstone without which scientific research can be unfocused, misguided, and ineffective. This conference is an important leader in incorporating lived experience experts as essential in anti-trafficking work.
Another important feature of the conference is the High School Online Program (HSOP) (https://www.traffickingconference.com/hsop), offering free, self-paced educational modules for high school students, teachers, and educators. The program supports raising awareness about exploitation while equipping youth with the practical tools necessary to combat injustice and advocate for meaningful social change. The program is structured around interactive modules that incorporate videos, activities, and discussion questions to keep students engaged. Content includes modules on Human Trafficking 101, Survivor Stories, Healthy Relationships, Substance Abuse & Addictions, Youth Rights, and more. To ensure the content remains highly targeted, HSOP is strictly reserved for high school-aged youth and their instructors.
But the conference is more than just the presentations! The IHTSJ Conference also features virtual vendor booths, networking lounges, and art exhibits. In fact, because the conference is completely virtual, I always advise people to prioritize real-time in-person experiences over the presentations, which can be viewed later. The most powerful tool we have in the anti-trafficking space is each other, and so the most important experiences at the conference are those that help connect us and our work with the global community. In this way, the IHTSJ Conference functions as an interactive, intersectional, and empowering space for the entire global anti-trafficking community. The conference proceedings each year helps attendees to return to their respective regions equipped with the tools necessary to break cycles of abuse, dismantle institutional biases, and restore human dignity.
All the conference presentations have important, new content that make them interesting to a wide audience. Let me give some examples of important advances presented at this year’s conference:
Matthew C. Clarke, principal researcher for the Freedom Keys Research Project and a GAHTS Senior Research Scholar, presented on "Preventing People from Becoming Traffickers Through Early Character Values Development". The past few years have seen considerable growth in research on trafficking prevention, including identification of risk factors, root causes driving trafficking, and especially educational materials and programs aimed at reducing the demand for trafficking. Matthew Clarke leverages an analytical perspective shaped by his diverse professional background including information technology, knowledge management, international development, and peacemaking to improve the efficacy of anti-trafficking interventions. While most youth programs focus on identifying and reducing victim vulnerability, this approach targets demand through programs to prevent youth from becoming perpetrators, exploiters, or demand-driving consumers.
Clarke’s session at IHTSJC this year draws attention to this critical gap in traditional human trafficking prevention education and presents an educational program to address it. The program fosters essential character values. An important part of this comes from the Josephson Institute of Ethics' Six Pillars of Character - specifically focusing on the dimensions of Respect, Fairness, and Caring. The curriculum develops these behaviors through awareness about the nature of trafficking, its pathways, and the consequences for both victims and abusers. During the session, Clarke leverages the "Perpetrators" module from HSOP, so it’s a great introduction to the program as well. Ultimately, the presentation serves as a call to action for educators and practitioners to incorporate ethical training and development in their own programs using this perpetrator-focused prevention model.
Another area where the conference has taken a leading role is promoting and learning from the voices of lived experience in human trafficking. This year’s conference included a panel presentation, “Partnering with Subject Matter Experts with Lived Experience at the Intersection of Human Trafficking and Substance Use”, featuring five outstanding lived experience advocates from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and their partners (several of whom are GAHTS Advocate Members).
Pearl Evans is a public health leader at MDH who uses her personal long-term recovery journey to drive authentic community engagement, build trust, and advance equitable, healing programs.
Sophia Maceda has more than a decade of experience supporting youth and adults impacted by sexual violence and exploitation.
Lateesha Coleman is the founder of Survivors for System's Change, providing consulting and training to non-profits and government agencies.
Dominique Buffet is a Minneapolis-based survivor-advocate working at the intersection of housing, education, and mental health to ensure marginalized families are not overlooked by community and government systems.
Joy Friedman is the founder of “The Missing Peace”, bringing over 25 years of training and consulting experience to anti-trafficking and homelessness movements.
Together, their presentation focused on integrating survivor voices into public health leadership. The panel details how the agency collaborates with individuals possessing lived experience to address intersecting public health issues, specifically human trafficking, substance use, and overdose. The MDH team does this by including lived experience advocates from the beginning as true experts and leaders. Over the past four years, these subject matter experts have guided strategic planning, co-created pilot training programs, and participated in research funded by the National Institute of Justice to address systems response. The session provides practical guidance on community-centered approaches, ethical engagement strategies, and person-centered methods to effectively include impacted communities in systems change.
This change in focus to include lived experience experts in program development and execution instead of overlooking them is a powerful expression of a key concept in anti-trafficking advocacy: we live is a world where people are meant to be cherished and things are meant to be used - and all the trouble in the world comes from getting those two things backwards: when things are cherished and people are used. Where lived experience voices are cherished, all of see more clearly to work for a better world where all are valued, affirmed, and supported in the continuing story.
Each year, the conference draws many representatives of the law enforcement and criminal justice community. An outstanding example this year was the presentation, “From Victim to Defendant: Race, Gender, and Survivor Criminalization in the Chrystul Kizer Case” from Rhonelle Bruder and Cassandra Mary Frances Young. Bruder is a GAHTS Research Scholar, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, with research on sex trafficking, healthcare industry responses, and survivor criminalization as in the Chrystul Kizer case. Dr. Young is an Assistant Professor in Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Denver with research sex trafficking within Black communities, examining how Black women and girls navigate victimization and gender-based violence within the criminal legal system.
These outstanding legal experts considered the Chrystul Kizer case, which drew international attention when the victim - only 17 years old at the time - killed the man abusing and exploiting her, only to be later convicted and received an 11 year prison sentence. The IHTSJ Conference presentation looked how structural injustice and systemic racism lead to the criminalization of sex trafficking survivors, specifically Black girls. Kizer's experience shows how anti-trafficking and criminal legal systems often treat victims as offenders. The presentation showed how multiple factors including misogynoir, adultification bias, and racialized gender stereotype combine to deny protection and justice to Black girls. Even though Kizer was trafficked as a minor and acted in self-defense against her exploiter, she faced prosecution and incarceration. Legal frameworks consistently ignore the realities of coercion, hyper-sexualize Black girls to exclude them from victim-centered protections. Not an isolated example, the presenters showed how the Kizer case call us to advocate for legal systems to move away from punitive measures toward trauma-informed and survivor-led legal reform.
Looking Forward
Each year, the International Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference brings together an amazing array of established and emerging researchers, practical workshops, lived experience advocates, and others for three days of the latest, high impact content in the anti-trafficking space. The virtual format makes it more accessible to a global community and people in all areas of work.
As a participant since 2017, it’s always been a highlight of my year! One thing I always try to do during a conference is to give some thought to how to participate the next year. I hope this blog encourages you to contribute your unique voice, research, and experiences for the benefit of all. You can contact the conference by sending an email to info@traffickingconference.com to be included on the email list to receive notification when presentation submissions are being accepted for the 2027 conference.
I hope to see you there!
About the Author
David Corliss, PhD is a Research Scholar in the Global Association of Human Trafficking Scholars (GAHTS) and the founder/director of Peace-Work, a cooperative of statisticians and data scientists who apply statistical methods to human trafficking research. Dr. Corliss holds a PhD in statistical astrophysics, and has published on topics related to how statistical methods can strengthen anti-trafficking work and scholarship.
