Join us to hear from best-selling author Loretta Napoleoni, whose new book uncovers a disturbing trend in the continuing fallout from the post-9/11 Patriot Act: the massive number of people trafficked to fund terror organizations, which is “historically unprecedented.”

Terrorist groups and black market economies thrive in areas of destabilization like Syria and Iraq. Add to that thousands of economic migrants on the run, and you have the making of a new profit centre: kidnapping and refugee trafficking. The business of human trafficking is a sophisticated mechanism delivering migrants to the West while funding the growth of criminal organizations like Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and ISIS. It’s a multi-billion-dollar business – bigger than the illegal drug trade. No one understands this dark side of globalization better than Napoleoni, an expert in the funding of terror groups.

Will the West once again reap the benefits of the political chaos it has sown in its own backyard? From colonization to the advent of “friendly” dictatorial regimes, today’s fast-aging European nations are buyers on the refugee market. New workers are needed, and the merchants of men are supplying them. But only skilled, highly educated refugees are wanted. As a tsunami of migrants and refugees floods Europe, new questions almost too numerous to count must be answered.

Loretta Napoleoni’s latest book, Merchants of Men: How Jihadists and ISIS Turned Kidnapping and Refugee Trafficking into a Multi-Billion Dollar Business

Loretta Napoleoni is the author of several international bestsellers including The Islamist Phoenix: The Islamist State (ISIS) and the Redrawing of the Middle East; Rogue Economics: Capitalism’s New Reality; and Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism. One of the world’s leading experts on money laundering and terror financing, she has worked as London correspondent and columnist for La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, El País, and Le Monde. A former Fulbright scholar, she holds an MA in international relations and economics from Johns Hopkins University, and an MPhil in terrorism from the London School of Economics. As chairperson of the countering terrorism financing group for the Club de Madrid, Napoleoni brought heads of state from around the world together to create a new strategy for combating the financing of terror networks.

Hosted by the Research Priority Area in Rights and Justice and the Centre for Research in Race and Rights.

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