Legal Options to Stop Human Trafficking
Good afternoon, and welcome to the second
hearing of our new Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law.
Unfortunately, our ranking member, Senator Coburn, is not able to be
here today. But I know he feels as strongly as I do about the issue we
will discuss today, and about the mission of this subcommittee.
This is the first time in Senate history there has been a
subcommittee focused on human rights. At this moment in time, it is
crucial to our national interest to promote greater respect for human
rights around the world. Repressive regimes that violate human rights
create fertile breeding grounds for terrorism, war, poverty, and
instability. Our nation and our world will never be fully secure as
long as fundamental human rights are not honored.
Our
first hearing, last month, addressed the issue of genocide and the rule
of law, focusing on the mass killings in Darfur. As a result of that
hearing, I introduced bipartisan legislation to promote divestment in
Sudan and to expand the reach of U.S. law so we can prosecute non-U.S.
nationals who are in this country for crimes of genocide they committed
abroad. We will continue to focus this subcommittee on legislation,
not lamentations.
At today’s hearing, we will consider the
issue of human trafficking. This issue is as old as mankind. From the
beginning of time there has been evidence of exploitation and slavery,
and we have not been spared in our time.
Few issues in the
world today raise as many human rights implications as the insidious
practice of trafficking in human beings. It is estimated that a
million people are trafficked across international borders each year
and pressed into labor or servitude by the use of force, fraud, or
coercion. Human trafficking represents the commerce in human misery.
As an introduction to today’s hearing, I would like to show a brief
video on human trafficking. It begins with a short public service
announcement put together by the United Nations to help raise awareness
of the trafficking issue. The second part of the video is an interview
with a trafficking victim in Cambodia. It will help put a human face
on this global tragedy.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan has said: “The world is now wrestling with a new form of slavery
– trafficking in human beings, in which many vulnerable people are
virtually abandoned by legal and social systems into a sordid realm of
exploitation and abuse.”
If there is any silver lining to
this tragic problem, it is that the world has now opened its eyes.
There are 117 signatories to the United Nations trafficking protocol,
and many of these countries have passed tough anti-trafficking laws in
the past few years. The United States passed its first major
anti-trafficking law in 2000.
It is impossible to discuss
the issue of human trafficking here in the United States Senate without
mentioning the visionary leadership of the late Senator Paul Wellstone.
Senator Wellstone called the trafficking of human beings “one of the
most horrendous human rights violations of our time.”
On
the day Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act on
October 11, 2000, Senator Wellstone went to the floor of the Senate.
He was very happy that day. He praised his lead co-sponsor, Senator
Sam Brownback, who has been a great champion of human rights for
years. Senator Wellstone praised the broad coalition of groups that
had come together to work on the bill – human rights groups, women’s
rights groups, Evangelical and Jewish groups, and members of the
Clinton Administration. And he said this: “I believe with passage of
this legislation...we are lighting a candle. We are lighting a candle
for these women and girls and sometimes men forced into forced
labor.... This is the beginning of an international effort to go after
this trafficking, to go after this major, god-awful human rights abuse.”
Senator Wellstone’s commitment to stopping human trafficking and
other human rights abuses stands as one of his most enduring legacies.
Despite his untimely passing, the candle Senator Wellstone lit nearly
seven years ago is still burning bright, and we rekindle it again today.
Thanks to passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000,
and the legal tools that Paul Wellstone gave the U.S. government, we
have made progress in combating this major human rights abuse.
The State Department – under the leadership of my friend and former
colleague in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Miller – has
pushed recalcitrant countries around the globe to pass anti-trafficking
laws and to help victims.
Of course, human trafficking is
not just a phenomenon happening in far off lands, but here at home as
well. The Department of Justice has done an admirable job of
investigating and prosecuting trafficking cases in the United States.
These cases are often very difficult to bring because trafficking
victims are isolated and trapped. If victims are able to break free,
they are often reluctant to talk to law enforcement out of fear of
deportation or prison.
For this reason, the role of victim
and legal service providers is especially important in the fight
against human trafficking. Organizations like the National Immigrant
Justice Center in Chicago are trusted sources of aid for trafficking
victims, and these groups work closely with prosecutors to gain the
trust of victims and make the case.
At today’s hearing, we
will ask: Seven years after passage of the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act, what progress has the U.S. government made in combating
human trafficking in the United States and abroad? What are we doing
right, and what do we need to do better?
What aspects of
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and its 2003 and 2005
re-authorizations should be strengthened or changed?
Should Congress amend U.S. law to make it easier and quicker for
trafficking victims in the U.S. and their family members to receive a
“T visa” and other government benefits?
We will also ask:
Why hasn’t the U.S. government done more to punish U.S. contractors in
Iraq and other foreign countries who engage in human trafficking?
And how can we hold foreign diplomats in the U.S. responsible for trafficking despite the existence of diplomatic immunity?
I intend to introduce legislation that will help address some of the problems that are identified at today’s hearing. Several parts of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act are set to expire at the end of 2007, so it is time to look carefully at this law and figure out what more needs to be done to further the fight against human trafficking.