The U.S. State Department’s Annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report was released on Monday, June 27, 2011. It is compiled each year to analyze 184 governments’ efforts to combat human trafficking within their own borders. Governments are ranked into one of three tiers based on their attempts to meet the “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” in Section 108 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).  It is useful as a tool for diplomatic pressure and incentives, a map of trafficking streams and trends, and an update on status quo practices and implementation of anti-trafficking efforts globally. [Read more →]

This Sunday we got great news that was long in coming!  The Senate passed an omnibus spending bill, approved days earlier by the House of Representatives, increasing by 25 percent the Department of Justice’s funding to assist survivors of human trafficking! [Read more →]

The crime of human trafficking happens to people from all walks of life here in the United States. We see past federal cases as concrete evidence. Human trafficking happens to men and to women, to boys and to girls. It happens to US citizens who were born and grew up in the United States, and it happens to people born in other countries who have migrated here to the United States. It happens to people who speak English and to people who don’t. It happens to people from affluent backgrounds, and to people who grew up in poverty. Put simply, it can happen to anyone. [Read more →]

In December 2008, I had the honor of attending the signing of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act reauthorization – named after British abolitionist William Wilberforce – in the Oval Office. When the original 2000 Act was revised by Congress in 2005 our legislators mandated that the Department of Labor create a list of products made by forms of human trafficking: forced labor and onerous child labor. [Read more →]

In a few days, a group of non-government organizations will be meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about a serious human trafficking matter: the veritable enslavement of some domestic servants by diplomats.  On our soil. [Read more →]