Case study
Bringing regional voices to the global stage
Pacific experience, grassroots expertise and global partnerships came together to influence a United Nations conversation on victim identification.
PARTNERSHIPS & IMPACT
We strengthen Aotearoa’s response by connecting the organisations already doing the work.
Just Mercy Trust works as a backbone organisation. We help align effort across government, non-government organisations, churches, researchers, and community partners.
Our role is coordination rather than frontline delivery. We strengthen collaboration, shared learning, and capability so the wider sector can respond with greater consistency.
Partnership is core to our charitable purpose. A connected response reaches further, protects more people, and lasts longer than any single effort.
THEORY OF CHANGE
No one organisation can solve trafficking alone.
Human trafficking crosses every boundary, yet the response remains fragmented. Lasting change requires people, organisations and sectors working together.
Just Mercy strengthens the connections, capability and shared voice that make collective action possible.
We deliberately work in the overlaps. Collaboration and partnership underpin everything we do. Our impact sits across three areas: advocacy, capability and representation.
This is where expertise is shared, capability is strengthened, voices are amplified and collective influence grows. One initiative can strengthen the sector, build collaboration and influence wider systems at the same time.
Our role is not to do everything ourselves. It is to strengthen the wider response, enabling people and organisations to achieve more together than any one of us can alone. Because trafficking doesn’t happen in silos, the response can’t either.
At the intersections, collective action becomes possible and lasting change is built.
- AdvocacyInfluencing policy systems and decision-making
- CapabilityStrengthening knowledge, skills and responding
- RepresentationBringing regional perspectives, expertise and priorities into the conversations that matter
- Advocacy × CapabilityTurning insight into stronger policy and practice
- Advocacy × RepresentationEnsuring regional perspectives shape the decisions that matter
- Capability × RepresentationStrengthening regional connections, understanding and participation
- Collective action, lasting change
COLLECTIVE ACTION, LASTING CHANGE
Our work & impact
Collaboration, targeted where it will make lasting change: advocacy, capability and representation working as one.
Advocacy
Influencing policy systems and decision-making
Capability
Strengthening knowledge, skills and responding
Representation
Bringing regional perspectives, expertise and priorities into the conversations that matter
Collaboration in practice
Advocacy × CapabilityTurning insight into stronger policy and practice
Advocacy × RepresentationEnsuring regional perspectives shape the decisions that matter
Capability × RepresentationStrengthening regional connections, understanding and participation
From local churches to the United Nations since 2024. None of it done alone.
Advocacy
UN Commission on the Status of Women (sessions 69 and 70), UN General Assembly, UN High Level Political Forum, submissions on New Zealand’s modern slavery legislation, and a briefing paper for the national anti-trafficking action plan.
Capability
Sector trainings, bi-monthly hui, coaching for sector leaders, survivor engagement working group and the Asia Region Anti-trafficking conference in 2025 and 2026.
Representation
Pacific perspectives carried into national, regional and UN forums
Collaboration in action
Advocacy × Capability(NZ) Modern slavery legislation working group and written submission
ViewAdvocacy × RepresentationOne of only four civil-society representatives selected to address the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting reviewing the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons.
ViewCapability × RepresentationAsia Region Anti-Trafficking conference breakout sessions, the first time the Pacific voice had been heard at a global anti-trafficking forum.
WatchWe measure through the collaboration lens: the strength of the response we help build, not the services we deliver.
Advocacy
Coordinated, evidence informed submissions
Capability
Shared learning that lifts the whole sector
Representation
Regional connection and participation
Collaboration is the measure
Advocacy × CapabilityEvidence informed submissions shaped by shared learning
Advocacy × RepresentationRegional voices present in national and UN advocacy
Capability × RepresentationStronger connections and participation across the Pacific
Stronger, more connected responses lead to prevention, protection, recovery, resilience and lasting change.
Evidence & impact
Since 2024, Just Mercy has helped strengthen the foundations of a more connected response, bringing people together, building capability and amplifying the voice of the region.
Case study
From survivor engagement to survivor leadership
The sector knows lived experience must help shape the response. Just Mercy is helping turn that commitment into meaningful action.
Case study
From working in silos to working together
How Just Mercy built the connections, trust and shared learning that enable the sector to work as one.
Case study
One voice when the window for change opened
When the Modern Slavery Bill arrived, a connected sector was ready to mobilise around one shared ask.
Case study
From sector insight to national policy
How collective sector expertise became a briefing paper that helped shape Aotearoa’s new Trafficking in Persons National Action Plan.
PRIMARY PROJECT
Oceania Freedom Network
Founded in 2024, the Oceania Freedom Network brings together organisations, practitioners and specialists working across the anti-trafficking response. With more than 70 members representing 38 organisations and consultants, OFN provides the relationships and shared space that enable learning, collaboration and collective action.
Just Mercy Trust provides the infrastructure and governance needed to strengthen and sustain this growing network.
From working in silos to working together
See how Just Mercy is building the connections, trust and shared learning that enable Aotearoa’s anti-trafficking sector to work more effectively together...
Read the case study