Uber is proud to announce our partnership with ECPAT-USA, a leading policy organization in the United States seeking to end the commercial, sexual exploitation of children through awareness, advocacy, policy, and legislation.  Uber is committed to safety in the communities we serve and we want to do our part to help put an end to the transportation of trafficked children.

“As soon as Uber’s Safety team learned about the role they could play in protecting children, they knew they had to get involved.” said Carol Smolenski, Executive Director of ECPAT-USA. “Uber demonstrated a genuine commitment to protecting children and preventing their exploitation.”

Later today, we will officially sign the ECPAT “Code,” which is a voluntary industry driven set of guidelines focused on helping travel and tourism companies prevent child sex tourism and trafficking of children.  By signing The Code, Uber will be the first company in the sharing economy to officially take the ECPAT-USA pledge against trafficking on its platform and we hope others will be inspired to join us.

The Code represents our commitment to preventing human trafficking of any kind on the platform and sharing educational materials that help our driver-partners be prepared to recognize the signs associated with the sexual exploitation of children.

Our first steps to promoting awareness about this issue with our driver-partners include:

  • Sharing educational materials at Partner Support Centers across the U.S. that describe physical and behavioral indicators of a commercially exploited and trafficked child to encourage everyone driving on the platform to be vigilant.

  • Updating our online driver resource pages to help educate driver-partners about the physical and behavioral indicators of a commercially exploited and trafficked child.

  • Making the tip lines for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and National Human Trafficking Resource Center readily available so our driver-partners have expert resources available to them.

  • If a driver thinks a child is in imminent danger, Uber directs them to reach out directly to local law enforcement or call 911.

Additionally, Uber has already updated our Code of Conduct to reinforce our position on the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

But we won’t stop there.  Our partnerships with organizations, such as ECPAT-USA, are going to help us continue to develop new ways to help raise awareness about this issue with our driver-partners and in the communities where we operate.