Gary Haugen

Activist, Change Agent, Christian, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Lawyer, Philanthropist, Writer/Editor

For more than two decades, Gary Haugen has been a leader of the global anti-slavery movement, bringing evidence of his organization’s work before U.S. Presidents and Congress, heads of state, world thoughts leaders, agencies such as The World Bank, The United Nations, World Economic Forum, and many other influencers to champion one cause: the end of slavery, trafficking and violence against the poor. Gary Haugen is founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, a global human rights organization that protects the poor from violence by partnering with local authorities and law enforcement to rescue victims, bring criminals to justice, restore survivors and strengthen justice systems. The largest organization of its kind, IJM has directly served tens of thousands of victims of violence and pioneered the world’s first validated metrics for reducing slavery prevalence and for measuring the success of survivor aftercare outcomes. Before founding IJM in 1997, Gary was a human rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, where he focused on crimes of police misconduct. In 1994, he served as the Director of the United Nations’ investigation in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. In this role, he led an international team of lawyers, criminal prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and forensics experts to gather evidence that would eventually be used to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice. Gary has been recognized by the U.S. State Department as a Trafficking in Persons “Hero” – the highest honor given by the U.S. government for anti-slavery leadership. Gary received a B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago. His work to protect the poor from violence has been featured by Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Times of India, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, the Guardian and National Public Radio, among many other outlets. His most recent book is The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence (Oxford University Press) which won the $100,000 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order in 2016.

Ending violence against the world’s poor and proving that justice for all people is possible.

While the world has made encouraging strides in the fight against global poverty, there is a hidden crisis silently undermining our best efforts and, if left unchecked, will ultimately ruin our dream. Beneath the surface of the world’s poorest communities, there is a vast and hidden epidemic of violence – rape, forced labor, human trafficking, violent land seizure, police abuse and other brutality. This daily onslaught of violence – what we term The Locust Effect – is a routine and relentless reality in the lives of poor people, and it ruins lives, blocks the road out of poverty, and undercuts development efforts. In one of the most remarkable – and unremarked upon – social disasters of the last half century, basic public justice systems in the developing world have descended into a state of utter collapse, the UN reporting that “most poor people live outside the protection of law.” None of our best efforts to end poverty will succeed until we also address everyday violence.

Human Rights