DARLENE PAJARITO

DARLENE R. PAJARITO, a Hubert Humphrey Fellow, is an Assistant City Prosecutor for the Philippine Department of Justice. She has served as part of the Philippine Delegation to the Expert Working Group during the drafting of the ASEAN Convention on Trafficking In Persons (ACTIP), the ASEAN Plan of Action on Women and Children (APA) and the Bohol Trafficking In Persons (TIP) Work Plan. Currently, she is the Philippine National TIP Specialist and is considered one of the staunchest anti-trafficking advocates in the country. She helped secure the Philippine’s first sex trafficking conviction in 2005 and the second labor trafficking conviction in 2011. As a prosecutor for the last 15 years, she has successfully secured six human trafficking convictions. From July of 2015 to February of 2018, Pajarito has served as the Executive Director of the Inter-Agency Council against Trafficking (IACAT) Secretariat and was instrumental in the development and implementation of IACAT’s several policies and programs on partnership, prevention, protection of victims, investigation, prosecution, and adjudication of TIP cases. She was recognized as a “Hero Acting to End Modern Day Slavery” by former US Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton.