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Consumer campaigns, self-help methodology and those who risk their lives to defend others cannot match the power of the trafficking industry. Jennifer Allsopp, reporting on the Trust Women conference for openDemocracy, looks for the core strategic thread that would take seriously the question of where power, and hence obligation lies

The questions that participants have tackled over the last two days of the of the Trust Women conference, Putting the Rule of Law Behind Women’s Rights, have been ambitious and varied: “Arab Spring, Opportunity or Disaster for Women?”, “What happens when culture clashes with the law?”, “Women for Sale: how to stop human trafficking?” After two days analysing and debating these issues through the lens of “the rule of law”, the 250 participants from the fields of business, government, law, media and NGOs left ready to fight for women’s rights on a range of fronts: to lobby their governments to adopt the International Labour Organisation Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, to create a network of bro bono lawyers dedicated to protecting women’s rights and to "match funding" for social enterprise ventures for trafficked women. The key was, said Douglas Alexander, British MP and shadow foreign and Commonwealth secretary, to use our “emotional revulsion as a prompt to action”.

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