A three-day conference on Europe's slave trade opens at Trinity College Dublin this evening.
Speakers will include Dr Maurice Manning, president of the Irish Human Rights Commission; former minister for justice Nora Owen; rights commissioner and barrister Suzanne Egan; film-maker David A Feingold and MEP Simon Coveney.
The event is organised by the Irish School of Ecumenics, TCD, and Ireland en Route, a network of groups concerned with trafficking for sexual exploitation into Ireland.
According to the organisers, slavery in Europe manifests itself in many forms, including the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation, the holding of migrant women in domestic servitude, the exploitation of bonded labourers in the agricultural sector and the trafficking of children for begging.
Groups such as Ruhama, which works with women in prostitution, have expressed concerns that women from a number of eastern European countries in particular are being trafficked to work in the sex trade here.