[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
WINNING THE FIGHT AGAINST HUMAN
TRAFFICKING: THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS
REAUTHORIZATION ACT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 2, 2017
__________
Serial No. 115-26
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina AMI BERA, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
PAUL COOK, California TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
TED S. YOHO, Florida DINA TITUS, Nevada
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois NORMA J. TORRES, California
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER, Illinois
DANIEL M. DONOVAN, Jr., New York THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
Wisconsin TED LIEU, California
ANN WAGNER, Missouri
BRIAN J. MAST, Florida
FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
THOMAS A. GARRETT, Jr., Virginia
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina KAREN BASS, California
DANIEL M. DONOVAN, Jr., New York AMI BERA, California
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
Wisconsin THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York
THOMAS A. GARRETT, Jr., Virginia
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Robert Benz, co-founder and executive vice president,
Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives.......................... 6
Ms. Jo Becker, advocacy director, Children's Rights Division,
Human Rights Watch............................................. 11
Mr. Tim Gehring, policy and research manager, International
Justice Mission................................................ 17
Ms. Melysa Sperber, director, Alliance to End Slavery and
Trafficking.................................................... 23
Ms. Malika Saada Saar, human rights lawyer (co-founder and former
executive director, Human Rights Project for Girls)............ 46
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Robert Benz: Prepared statement.............................. 8
Ms. Jo Becker: Prepared statement................................ 13
Mr. Tim Gehring: Prepared statement.............................. 19
Ms. Melysa Sperber: Prepared statement........................... 26
Ms. Malika Saada Saar: Prepared statement........................ 49
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 74
Hearing minutes.................................................. 75
Ms. Melysa Sperber: ATEST's ``A Presidential Agenda for
Abolishing Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking''.............. 76
WINNING THE FIGHT AGAINST HUMAN
TRAFFICKING: THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS
REAUTHORIZATION ACT
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TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2017
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:06 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The hearing will come to order.
Good afternoon to everyone and welcome to our hearing on
accelerating the fight against human trafficking, with
particular focus on the new Frederick Douglass Trafficking
Victims Prevention and Protection Act of 2017, the
comprehensive bipartisan legislation that my friend and
colleague Karen Bass and I introduced last Thursday, joined by
Chairman Royce, Representatives Jackson Lee, Brooks, Frankel,
Wagner, Cardenas, Poe, and Costello.
As I think all of you know, in the fight to end modern-day
slavery, this new bill honors the extraordinary legacy of one
of the greatest Americans who ever lived. Born in 1818--we look
forward to celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth next
year--Frederick Douglass escaped slavery when he was 20 and
dedicated his entire life to abolishing slavery, and after
emancipation, to ending the Jim Crow laws, while struggling for
full equality for African-American citizens. A gifted orator,
author, editor, statesman, and as I pointed out at our press
conference, he was a Republican, he died in 1895.
We were honored to have Kenneth Morris, his great great
great-grandson, at our press conference last week, who made
very incisive remarks about the importance of education, and
reiterated what will be reiterated today, that knowledge makes
a man unfit to be a slave. It is easier to build strong
children than to repair broken men. That is some of the
tremendous legacy of Frederick Douglass and the foundation that
now bears his name and has been doing remarkable work for a
decade.
The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and
Protection Reauthorization Act authorizes $130 million over 4
years to prevent human trafficking, protect victims, and beef
up prosecution at home and abroad. Among other things, I note
that this bill encourages more hotels at home and abroad to put
policies and trainings in place so that the hotels are less
likely to be used by human traffickers to exploit children. To
the extent practicable, the U.S. Government directs government
travelers using taxpayer money to use hotels that have taken
affirmative steps to end trafficking within their walls.
The new bill seeks to restore the credibility of the
Trafficking in Persons Report produced annually by the State
Department to hold countries accountable for progress or the
lack thereof in the fight against human trafficking. As we all
know, talk is cheap, and many countries will have good, well-
focused, talking points about what they are doing. We want to
know what is happening on the ground, which is why the data
calls that go out to our U.S. Embassies and the information we
exchange between countries, our Embassies, and, of course, the
TIP office have made a huge difference, all for the positive.
The report, as we know, scrutinizes more than 190
countries, with the credible threat of serious sanctions for
egregious violators that are branded Tier 3, to improve their
trafficking laws and their actions. But in several notable
cases, particularly in 2015, countries that should have been
held accountable by the last administration with Tier 3
designations were given a pass. Countries such as Malaysia,
Cuba, China, Oman, Uzbekistan, and others.
That belief that they got it wrong was exposed in large
part by a Reuters investigative report that found that the TIP
office and its personnel had made recommendations to put these
countries on Tier 3. At a different level of our chain of
command, for political reasons, especially in the case of a
country like Malaysia, because they would have been ineligible
for TPP, which was a very active goal at the time, were not put
on the Tier 3 sanctions list.
The new bill tries to ensure that countries complicit in
trafficking are always held accountable, no politics, ever, and
will removed from current law the presumption that countries
failing to quantify convictions and identify victims somehow
deserve passing grades. IJM's policy director, Tim Gehring,
will underscore that concern in his testimony today stating,
The politicization of the tier rankings, against the
advice of the anti-trafficking experts at TIP office is
to the detriment of the annual report, the U.S.
Government's leadership on combating of human rights
abuse, and, ultimately, to the people exploited in the
countries which receive an undeserving higher ranking.
Last year alone, I chaired two hearings on this, the first,
Accountability Over Politics: Scrutinizing the Trafficking in
Persons Report in July and earlier in March of last year, Get
It Right This Time: A Victims-Centered Trafficking in Persons
Report.
I was profoundly disappointed that the Obama administration
chose to politicize tier rankings rather than speak truth to
power. If the Trump administration follows that dangerous
precedent, I can assure you I and many others will be no less a
critic.
The Frederick Douglass Act will also limit the amount of
time a country can stay on the warning Tier 2 Watch List. Holly
Burkhalter is here, and she worked so hard with us on the
Trafficking Prioritization Act, which in part would have
focused on that issue. And what that will do, this provision,
it would not be 4 years before their warning is up before they
get relisted. It could be far sooner than that. The Frederick
Douglass Act will ensure that countries still using child
soldiers, such as Afghanistan, where boys are on the front line
fighting the Taliban by day and being used as sex slaves at
night, stop this obscene, horrific practice before being
allowed to partner with the U.S. military, something Green
Beret Sergeant First Class Charles Martland tried to do at
great personal cost.
The Frederick Douglass Act will ensure that waivers for
countries using child soldiers are not abused. In 2016, only 3
of 10 countries designated as child soldiers were not allowed
to access funds, and these were the countries we did not fund
anyway. The act will ensure that the waiver is used only in
cases where the President can ensure steps are being taken to
address the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
In addition, the act will help keep goods made by child
trafficking victims out of the United States by ensuring
continued funding for, and enhancing, the Department of Labor
reports on slave-made goods.
Provisions in the act will prevent the abuse of domestic
servants in Embassies and diplomatic homes in the United
States. Diplomats and their families in the U.S. are getting
off scot-free after trafficking domestic servants in their
homes, and we are trying to change that. Trafficking is illegal
here no matter who you are.
The act encourages accountability for U.S. Government funds
going abroad to help trafficking victims, and strengthens
implementation of U.S. laws and regulations to prevent
government purchases from putting money in the hands of
traffickers. It also amends our Elementary and Secondary
Education Act to ensure that our students are forewarned or
taught what to look for when it comes to trafficking. As many
of our witnesses will say so eloquently today, prevention,
prevention is key.
Melysa Sperber makes the point that progress is lagging in
the prevention area, that we have made progress on protection.
We have made progress on prosecution of the traffickers, but
there has been a lag that has been on the prevention side.
I do want to, before yielding to Ms. Bass, thank so many
who have worked so hard on this, including my staff, for the
work that they have done, and Ms. Bass' staff. And I just want
to single out David Abramowitz is here, and I want to thank him
for his decades-long efforts on behalf of human trafficking
victims.
And I would like to yield to Ms. Bass.
Ms. Bass. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and
Protection Act builds upon the great work of the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act, which was led by Chairman Smith.
As the co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth
and a member of the Caucus on Human Trafficking, I am
particularly concerned about what we are doing to combat the
devastating epidemic of young girls in the foster care system
falling prey to child exploitation and sex trafficking. The
intersection between involvement in child welfare and child sex
trafficking has been documented by a number of organizations
and agencies. It is estimated that well more than 60 percent of
child victims of commercial sex exploitation have been in the
foster care system. And we also know the average age of a girl
entering into trafficking is 12 years old.
One of the main reasons girls cannot escape is because they
do not have safe and appropriate housing options. Because these
girls are under the care of the Federal Government and the
Federal Government in effect becomes their parent, then it is
the responsibility to make sure that these girls do not fall
between the cracks, and sadly, our Government has failed young
girls in the foster care system by not intervening with
aggressive effort to meet the unique and special needs of this
vulnerable population.
As we continue to tackle the growing epidemic of child sex
trafficking in the United States, it is critically important
that we focus on the special housing needs of young girls in
the foster care system.
In working with my colleagues on the drafting of the
legislation, I wanted to make sure that we keep this focus by
keeping the needle of Federal grant money aimed at providing
long-term and trauma-informed housing assistance to
disconnected youth and underserved women and girls between the
ages of 10 and 24 who are homeless, in foster care, or are
involved in the juvenile justice system.
Current funding for housing and shelter for victims of
child sex trafficking is insufficient to meet the growing
demand of youth victims, especially young foster girls
exploited through their emotional and financial
vulnerabilities. In order to fully address the current housing
crisis, the Federal Government needs to fully invest in
providing safe and stable housing options and access and self-
sustaining economic opportunities. The child welfare to sex
trafficking pipeline must stop. We know that the majority of
children that are trafficked are girls, but we also know that
boys can be caught up in this as well.
This bill is a good step forward in raising awareness of
the collective and coordinated efforts required at every level
of government to stop and prevent child sex trafficking.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bass.
We do have three votes. And I regret, and I apologize to
our distinguished witnesses. We will take a very brief recess
while we go vote.
I do want to thank Allison Hollabaugh for her work on this.
Allison has been working tenaciously on all aspects of this,
working with the stakeholders who care so deeply and have such
good insights as to what is needed to make our trafficking
efforts even more efficacious.
And I do want to thank, I mentioned David Abramowitz;
although he is not here, Ambassador Joseph Rees, who worked as
such a great team of staffers on the original Trafficking
Victims Protection Act. It took 3 years to get that law
enacted. Some people thought we were a solution in search of a
problem. It is not like it is today where there is a general
understanding, although it is still never enough. But I want to
thank all of you for your extraordinary help on this.
We will take a brief respite. We will be back in about 15
or 20 minutes. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will resume its hearing. Again,
I apologize for the delay.
I would like to introduce our very distinguished panel of
witnesses, beginning first with Mr. Robert Benz, who is co-
founder and executive vice president of the Frederick Douglass
Family Initiatives, where he is responsible for policy,
programming, and strategic development. Mr. Benz led the
development of FDFI's core philosophy behind his prevention
education approach to human trafficking and developed its One
Million Abolitionists Project, which will print and give away 1
million copies of the bicentennial edition of the Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, to young
people across the country. And I have been promised a copy too,
so thank you. Mr. Benz was also a founding partner in the
PROTECT Human Trafficking Training and Education program in the
State of California.
We will then hear from Ms. Jo Becker, who is the advocacy
director of the Children's Rights Division at Human Rights
Watch. As the founding chairperson of the International
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, she helped
campaign successfully for an international treaty banning the
forced recruitment of children under the age of 18 or their use
in armed conflict. She has conducted field investigations on
children's rights in Burma, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Morocco,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and the United States. She is also an
adjunct associate professor of international and public affairs
at Columbia University and an award-winning author of two
books.
We will then hear from Mr. Tim Gehring, who is the policy
director for the International Justice Mission. Prior to this
position, he served as the principal researcher for The Locust
Effect, a Washington Post best seller about how violence
against the poor perpetuates poverty. He holds a master's in
international economics and development from the University of
Kentucky. He is a member of the IJM government relations team
for the past 6 years.
We will then hear from Ms. Melysa Sperber, who is the
director of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, or
ATEST. Melysa coordinates the coalition's efforts to advocate
for solutions to prevent and end all forms of human trafficking
and modern slavery in the United States and overseas. Prior to
joining ATEST, she was director of human rights at Vital Voices
Global Partnership, where she implemented programs in more than
20 countries to combat violence against women, including human
trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual violence. Melysa
also previously served as a staff attorney at the Tahirih
Justice Center, a nonprofit legal services agency that provides
services to women fleeing gender-based persecution.
And our final, last but not least, and we certainly look
forward to her testimony, Ms. Malika Saada Saar, who is an
accomplished human rights lawyer. She was the founder and the
executive director of the Human Rights Project for Girls, a
human rights organization focused on gender-based violence
against young women and girls in the United States. She led the
effort to shut down craigslist sex ads that served as the
leading site for the trafficking of children for sex, ended the
Federal practice of shackling pregnant mothers behind bars in
the United States prisons, and successfully advocated for
millions in Federal funding for treatment centers for at-risk
families.
Again, I thank you for your patience. Above all, I thank
you for your advocacy and leadership and for taking the time to
testify today.
Mr. Benz.
STATEMENT OF MR. ROBERT BENZ, CO-FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE VICE
PRESIDENT, FREDERICK DOUGLASS FAMILY INITIATIVES
Mr. Benz. Good afternoon, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member
Bass, and subcommittee members. Thank you for inviting me
today.
I am very happy to discuss the recently introduced
Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and
Protection Reauthorization Act. I love the sound of that.
Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, or FDFI, is an
Atlanta-based public charity that was founded by Nettie
Washington Douglass, Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., and myself. Ms.
Douglass has an incredible lineage. She is the great great-
granddaughter of Frederick Douglass, and she is also the great-
granddaughter of Booker T. Washington. Her eldest son, Mr.
Morris, is, of course, one generation removed from these two
influential Americans.
Since 2007, FDFI has built upon those legacies in
developing methods for addressing contemporary slavery through
prevention education, professional training, and grassroots
community collaboration. Our organization is guided by a
philosophy that is articulated in those two famous quotes that
you mentioned earlier, that knowledge makes a man unfit to be a
slave, and that it is easier to build strong children than to
repair broken men.
We believe that the Frederick Douglass Act is a critical
step to integrating these two ideas into anti-trafficking
efforts, both domestically and abroad.
The addition of the word ``prevention'' to the title of the
bill gives us hope that more attention and more resources will
be focused on what happens to a person, especially a child,
before they become a victim of human trafficking.
In order to begin reducing the numbers of new victims being
exposed to the unforgiving cycle of exploitation, we must
consider investing in primary prevention and early intervention
strategies. To be clear, when we speak of primary prevention,
we are referring to the application of knowledge in the form of
education, training, and/or awareness initiatives for general
populations.
The cost benefits to taxpayers for preventing or mitigating
human trafficking at an early stage are enormous. The human
benefit for preventing someone from being victimized is
incalculable.
We are encouraged by the bill's recommendation to amend
language in the ESEA that will incentivize educating children
on the signs and dangers of human trafficking. FDFI has
firsthand experience doing this in primary and secondary
schools, while collaborating with educators, law enforcement,
service agencies, and NGOs. Through our curriculum, we help
young people make the connection between historical and modern
slavery, then ask them to take what they have learned and do
something to address the problem in their communities.
FDFI also develops training programs for educators, youth
supervisors, and community professionals helping to build
stronger and safer social structures around children. We are
particularly proud of the prevention education and training
program started in 2016 called PROTECT, an acronym meaning
Prevention Organized to Educate Children on Trafficking. It
will be implemented in 35 of 58 California counties by 2019.
Our partners include 3 Strands Global, Love Never Fails,
Polaris Project, and the California Department of Education.
Together, we are creating a model that can be replicated
elsewhere in the world that is holistic, cost efficient, and an
effective way to keep children from being trafficked in
communities from California to Khartoum. I have provided more
details on PROTECT for the written record.
The United States took a leadership role in anti-
trafficking with the first Trafficking Victims Protection Act
in 2000. We now have an opportunity to become the leader for
innovative primary prevention strategies that we believe will
incrementally reduce the numbers of young victims and allow us
to envision eradicating contemporary slavery in the United
States and around the world. We also hope that the endorsement
of prevention within the Frederick Douglass Act will translate
meaningfully into the design of the next strategic action plan
on human trafficking. FDFI is enthusiastic about supporting and
participating in these efforts.
In the meantime, on behalf of the Frederick Douglass
family, we look forward to collaborating with Federal
legislators, agencies, and nonprofit organizations in our
mutual struggle to end contemporary slavery.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Benz follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Mr. Benz, thank you very much for your
testimony.
Ms. Becker.
STATEMENT OF MS. JO BECKER, ADVOCACY DIRECTOR, CHILDREN'S
RIGHTS DIVISION, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Ms. Becker. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today regarding the Frederick Douglass Reauthorization
Act and to specifically address how this bill will help the
United States more effectively curtail the recruitment and use
of child soldiers around the globe.
One of the most tragic aspects of contemporary warfare is
the participation of children: As spies, as lookouts, as
guards, as cooks, and very often on the front lines of combat.
The ranks of child soldiers include young girls forced to carry
out suicide attacks by Boko Haram in Nigeria, children lured to
fight in Syria by promises of money, and boys in South Sudan
who join fighting forces after their schools have been
destroyed and they lose all hope of education.
I have worked on the issue of child soldiers for nearly 20
years, and during that time, I have seen both positive and
negative developments. Some of the good news is that since
2000, more than 100,000 child soldiers have been released or
demobilized from national armed forces and armed groups. The
number of countries where children are actively fighting has
dropped by a third, and at least 26 governments and armed
groups have signed action plans with the United Nations to end
their use of child soldiers.
But at the same time, in some countries, the situation is
getting much worse. In Yemen, for example, the U.N. reported
that the rate of child recruitment increased fivefold in just 1
year. In Afghanistan, child recruitment doubled between 2014
and 2015. In South Sudan, at least 16,000 children have been
recruited as soldiers in the past 3 years alone.
The United States has played an important role in helping
to curtail the use of child soldiers. The U.S. exerted
leadership in 2002 by ratifying the U.N. treaty that prohibits
the use of children in hostilities. After ratification, all
branches of the armed services immediately issued new rules to
keep underage soldiers out of combat, and this helped to set an
important and positive example for other militaries worldwide.
Congress, to its great credit, decided to tackle the issue
further in 2008, when it adopted the Child Soldiers Prevention
Act as part of the Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act that year.
The principle behind the Child Soldiers Prevention Act is
simple. Foreign governments should not get U.S. military
assistance if they use or support the use of child soldiers.
This law applies to six categories of U.S. military funding,
including foreign military financing, direct commercial sales,
and foreign military sales.
The Child Soldiers Prevention Act sends a very powerful
message. If you want U.S. military assistance, you can't use
child soldiers. This legislation was first proposed by Senators
Sam Brownback of Kansas and Richard Durbin of Illinois. It
garnered strong bipartisan support and was signed into law by
President George W. Bush.
The law requires the State Department to issue a list every
year of the governments that are involved in the use of child
soldiers. Since the law was implemented in 2010, the list has
varied between 6 and 10 governments. Five have been listed
every single year: Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
Now, under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, we have seen
several success stories, but uneven implementation of the law
has also resulted in many missed opportunities. One success
story is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the height of
Congo's war in the 1990s, 30,000 children were fighting on all
sides of the conflict. The U.N. tried for 7 years to try and
get Congo to sign an action plan to end their use of child
soldiers and failed. But after the Obama administration
announced that it was withholding foreign military financing
and training of a battalion under the Child Soldiers Prevention
Act, Congo took only 5 days to sign an action plan, and since
then their recruitment of children by government forces has
dropped to almost zero.
So this example shows the potential of the law to effect
change, but unfortunately there have been many other missed
opportunities.
Mr. Chairman, earlier you said that too many governments
are being given a pass, and when it comes to child soldiers,
unfortunately that is the case. The law allows the President to
issue national security waivers that allow countries to
continue receiving aid, even if they have done little or even
nothing to curb their use of child soldiers. Congress intended
these waivers to be used in exceptional cases, but
unfortunately they have become more the norm than the
exception.
The Stimson Center found that President Obama used these
waivers in 60 percent of all cases and that 95 percent of the
aid that would normally be withheld by the law was allowed to
go through. As a result, governments using child soldiers have
very little incentive to take the law seriously and to stop
exploiting children.
The Frederick Douglass Reauthorization Act is going to make
important amendments to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, and
will help ensure that this law is used for its intended purpose
while still maintaining flexibility. The Frederick Douglass
Reauthorization Act will help reduce the use of waivers for
countries that have done nothing to address their use of child
soldiers, and will provide for much greater transparency on how
the act is implemented. These provisions will go a long way in
enabling the U.S. to be much more effective in ending the
exploitation of children as soldiers around the world.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Becker follows:]
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----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ms. Becker.
I would like to now yield to Mr. Gehring.
STATEMENT OF MR. TIM GEHRING, POLICY AND RESEARCH MANAGER,
INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION
Mr. Gehring. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and thank you,
Ranking Member Bass, for holding the hearing and giving me the
opportunity to testify today. I would also like to take the
opportunity to thank your staff, who worked relentlessly and
with sincere passion to craft a bill that takes a comprehensive
approach to address the needs of all victims, both here in the
United States and abroad, children and adults, men and women
from all types of exploitation.
I am honored to be here on behalf of International Justice
Mission, a human rights agency that works to increase the
capacity of public justice systems around the world to respond
to violent crime, including forced labor and sexual
exploitation. We collaborate with courts, police, prosecutors,
judges, and social workers around the world to rescue victims,
hold perpetrators accountable through investigations, arrests,
prosecutions, and restore survivors.
IJM has seen broken justice systems improve dramatically by
ending impunity for crimes and providing a deterrence for
trafficking and slavery.
The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act of 2017 is the sixth iteration of the
original Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a bill that,
thanks to your leadership, Chairman Smith, was authorized
almost 2 decades ago. And from IJM's perspective, the TVPA and
its subsequent authorizations have been transformative in ways
that other human rights legislation has not because Congress
has been engaged in close oversight since the legislation was
first enacted.
Similarly, Congress supported the Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons in the State Department,
including by increasing its grant and administration budget,
holding regular hearings, and its willingness to protest
politicization of the rankings in the annual Trafficking in
Persons Report has been extremely helpful in cementing the
policies of the TVPA. It has strengthened the hand of the TIP
office, it has strengthened the U.S. anti-slavery policy, and
it has strengthened slavery-burdened countries' efforts to
prevent, protect, and prosecute trafficking in persons.
The minimum standards that were articulated in the original
TVPA and that have been maintained for the past 2 decades have
given U.S. diplomats a consistent foundation for engaging
governments on the steps required to meet the international
anti-trafficking standards of which the TVPA was based.
Seventeen years after the original TVPA was authorized,
countries are well aware of what those standards are, and it is
important that we do not move the goalposts. Doing so risks
losing the leverage that the TIP office and its dedicated staff
has built over many years of engagement. Rather, the reporting
process should be strengthened, and we should hold the
countries accountable for showing concrete action and credible
evidence to justify their tier rankings. And I am encouraged
that the legislation includes many of these provisions that
provide more granularity and transparency.
It is worth emphasizing, however, that the politicized
rankings such as Malaysia's upgrade in 2015 that you referred
to, Chairman Smith, didn't occur because U.S. law was unclear.
It occurred because other interests prevailed over factual
accounting. Therefore, the fix for this problem isn't always
legal or legislative. It is rather that the entire State
Department needs to put its weight and will in an accurate and
candid report, and helping governments make progress.
Many of the struggles between Congress and the executive
branch have been over the Tier 2 Watch List ranking Chairman
Smith, this is an issue you spoke to earlier, especially
preventing Tier 2 Watch List countries from becoming a
purgatory for poorly performing countries that the State
Department doesn't want to downgrade to Tier 3. And the reason
that the State Department doesn't want to put countries on Tier
3 is because it is largely viewed as the pariah's club,
populated almost entirely by countries that the U.S. has
strained diplomatic relationships with: North Korea, Iran,
Syria, Venezuela.
And, indeed, all of these countries have significant
trafficking in persons problems, but the perception is that
Tier 3 has become a dumping ground for countries that the U.S.
doesn't like for other reasons. And consigning friendly
countries to this list then becomes quite problematic, and the
regional bureaus within the State Department are then reluctant
to do so. But if Tier 3 and the other tier rankings were simply
an accurate assessment of the government's TIP performance, it
wouldn't need to be dramatic or disruptive. It would just be a
statement of fact.
The politicization of the tier rankings against the advice
of the anti-trafficking in persons experts at the TIP office is
to the detriment of the annual report. It is to the detriment
of the U.S. Government's leadership on combating this human
rights abuse. And, ultimately, it is to the detriment of the
people in these countries which receive an undeserved higher
ranking.
The U.S. Government has a number of diplomatic and
political tools to support allied countries, but rewarding them
with undeserved rankings in the TIP Report should not be one of
them.
IJM has provided rescue to over 34,000 people from violent
oppression in the past several years. We have seen how the TIP
Report makes an actual difference in people's lives, when it
spurs countries to action, and when it impacts the realities of
actual people. So it is imperative that the rankings of each
country also be based in reality.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Bass. I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gehring follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Gehring. I would just
note for the record that Gary Haugen testified right here when
we were working on the original Trafficking Victims Protection
Act, and his insights were of tremendous value in shaping the
original bill, all the subsequent iterations of it. As a matter
of fact, we have a copy. It was September 14, 1999. And so if
you could pass on to him the subcommittee's gratitude, my
personal gratitude, for his leadership years to date. It has
been extraordinary.
Mr. Gehring. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Sperber.
STATEMENT OF MS. MELYSA SPERBER, DIRECTOR, ALLIANCE TO END
SLAVERY AND TRAFFICKING
Ms. Sperber. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bass, thank you for holding
this hearing on one of the most intractable human rights
violations of our time, the crime of human trafficking. And
thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I also echo
Tim's gratitude to your staff for their hard work.
Mr. Chairman, I am the director of the Alliance to End
Slavery and Trafficking. ATEST is a coalition of 13 human
rights organizations that advocates for solutions to prevent
and end all forms of human trafficking and modern slavery
around the world. ATEST is supported by Humanity United and
Humanity United Action.
Mr. Chairman, my written statement outlines the progress we
are making, as well as noting ways the U.S. Government should
invest in programming and implement policy solutions that will
reduce vulnerability to human trafficking worldwide. I ask that
my full statement be made a part of the record.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, yours and that of all of our
distinguished witnesses, and any additional material you think
the subcommittee should have in its record. Without objection,
so ordered.
Ms. Sperber. Thank you.
I also would draw the subcommittee's attention to ATEST's
Presidential Agenda for Abolishing Modern Slavery and Human
Trafficking. It has many important recommendations that apply
to Congress, as well as the new administration. And thank you
so much for agreeing for it to be part of the record.
Today, I will focus my remarks on the Frederick Douglass
Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization
Act. ATEST welcomes the introduction of the FDTVPPRA, and we
are particularly pleased with the bill's emphasis on
prevention.
Nearly 2 decades after the enactment of the landmark
Trafficking Victims Protection Act, we have made considerable
progress, particularly in mobilizing political will to
prosecute traffickers and protect victims of all forms of
trafficking.
Progress is lagging, as you noted, Mr. Chairman, on
prevention, and we commend the reauthorization's sponsors for
taking up this challenge.
I first started understanding the importance of prevention
when I got my first anti-trafficking job. I just did not know I
was combating human trafficking at the time. I worked for a
faith-based organization serving runaway and homeless youth in
New York City, LGBTQI youth fleeing abusive situations, young
men and women of color caught in an unforgiving criminal
justice system, and children exiting the foster care system,
who, as Ranking Member Bass noted, are at heightened risk.
All of them were marginalized. All of them were desperate
to survive, and all of them were at risk of human trafficking.
But I saw that if they had their basic needs covered, access to
specialized services, and the promise of opportunity, the young
people I met were resilient and unstoppable. And because they
were receiving services, they were less at risk to human
trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
Later, I worked as an attorney representing immigrant women
who survived being trafficked into the United States for labor
and sexual exploitation. Each of my clients pointed to moments
in their lives when, had there been services and resources
available, the vulnerability they faced could have been
alleviated. The message these women sent was straightforward:
Their suffering could have been prevented. The reason for
sharing the message was just as straightforward: They wanted to
prevent someone else's suffering. My clients taught me the
importance of prevention, and they left me with an even more
valuable lesson: Survivors are the experts. They know the most
about this crime, how to prevent it, how to recover from it,
and how to thrive as a survivor of it.
I later joined an international women's organization where
we worked with local partners to implement anti-trafficking
programs supported by the U.S. State Department. I met girls
whose mothers had been trafficked into local brothels. These
girls knew, even at the early age 9 or 10, that this would have
been their future if not for the incredible programs that took
them off the streets, provided them with a safe place, an
education, a way out of abject poverty and vulnerability.
I also met with law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges
who work to prosecute trafficking cases. They unequivocally
pointed to prevention as the greatest priority. They also
stressed the simultaneous challenge of finding resources and
mobilizing attention on proven ways to prevent exploitation,
strategies that include providing children and families with
access to education, livelihood, and social protection
programs, strengthening rule of law, and ensuring survivors,
vulnerable youth, and workers inform the development and
implementation of anti-trafficking policy.
ATEST believes the U.S. Government can and should
strengthen its leadership to combat human trafficking around
the world by resourcing efforts to prevent this crime and
provide comprehensive services to those who are victimized. We
are deeply concerned about the Trump administration's proposed
cuts to foreign assistance, which we believe could have
significant impact on our anti-trafficking efforts.
We commend this committee for spurring multiple
administrations to use the full range of foreign policy tools
to combat this scourge and urge that you continue to do so as
the administration transition continues.
At Humanity United, we focus on bringing new solutions to
global problems that have long been considered intractable. For
us, preventing the risk of human trafficking is a critical
element of our strategy. Whether it is working alongside
companies to identify and address trafficking in their supply
chains, advocating for the enforcement of the Tariff Act's
prohibition on the importation of slave-made goods, or learning
from survivors' critical expertise, we know that solutions to
trafficking begin and end with preventing this crime from
occurring in the first place.
ATEST believes the reauthorization bill would bolster our
efforts to prevent human trafficking from happening in the
first place. This bill does that in ways such as enhancing the
integrity of the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in
Person's Report to ensure, as you noted, Mr. Chairman, that
politics never, ever determines tier rankings; enabling schools
to educate children about how to avoid all forms of human
trafficking; ensuring that U.S. Government procurement does not
fund human trafficking; bolstering protections for domestic
workers employed by diplomats; and reauthorizing critical anti-
trafficking programs across the government.
ATEST looks forward to working with the bill's sponsors and
all Members of the House to move it forward with strong
bipartisan support. We want to continue working with the
committee to seek ways to strengthen the bill even further. A
few of our proposed suggestions are contained in my written
testimony.
We also urge you to oppose deep and disproportionate cuts
to the international affairs budget in both the Fiscal Year
2017 and Fiscal Year 2018 spending bills. If realized, the cuts
would be devastating for anti-trafficking efforts worldwide.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for
all the work you have done to ensure the U.S. Government
continues to be a leader in the fight to end trafficking
worldwide. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Sperber follows:]
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----------
Mr. Smith. Ms. Sperber, thank you for your testimony and
for your multiple recommendations made in that extensive
submission that you have made to the subcommittee. Thank you so
very much.
I would like to now yhield to Ms. Saada Saar.
STATEMENT OF MS. MALIKA SAADA SAAR, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER (CO-
FOUNDER AND FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT FOR
GIRLS)
Ms. Saada Saar. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking
Member Congresswoman Bass. Thank you for the invitation to be
here today.
I am the cofounder and former executive director of the
Human Rights Project for Girls, an organization that I founded
to address gender-based violence. Although I am presently
Google's senior counsel on civil and human rights, I am pleased
to appear before you today as a human rights lawyer, who for
more than 15 years has witnessed how children trafficked on
American soil have too often been left behind.
Let me begin with a story of a girl, a trafficked girl who
tried to run away. She could no longer endure the sexual
torture and injury done to her still-child's body. She could
not tolerate being raped every day again and again by the men
who purchased her. Because she could not take it anymore, she
ran, but her trafficker caught her. And to make an example of
her, to scare the other girls under his control, he set her on
fire.
This is not a story of child sex trafficking and
enslavement that happened in some faraway country. It is our
story. It is the story of a trafficked girl here in the U.S.,
in Compton.
Girls are sold in this country with the same disregard for
human dignity, and they are tortured and burned in the same
ways when they try to escape. Across the United States, there
are child sex markets not very different from those in
Cambodia, in Thailand, and in India. Girls are abducted or
lured by traffickers, and once in the commercial sex trade,
they are routinely raped, beaten into submission, and sometimes
even branded. They are branded like cattle. I have met girls
whose faces were branded with the names of their traffickers.
The human rights activist Ruchira Gupta says that the girl
who is bought and sold anywhere in the global slave trade is
always the last girl. She is the child who has been left behind
by her family, by her community. She is the child who has been
denied love, denied support, denied education, safety, and
economic stability. In the U.S., the last girl is often the
girl left behind by our foster care system. Most of the
children bought and sold here for sex are child welfare
involved, and the data is devastating.
So in California, between 50 and 80 percent of sexually
exploited children were involved in the child welfare system.
The Administration on Children, Youth, and Families has cited
several studies showing that 50 to 90 percent of victims of
trafficking had been involved with child welfare services. In
2013, 60 percent of the sex trafficking victims recovered as
part of the FBI's nationwide range were children from foster
care or group homes.
There are so many girls I have met whose lives painfully
demonstrate this child welfare to trafficking pipeline. For
example, at a policy roundtable with 12 girls who had been
exploited, I listened as each one of them began their story of
being trafficked with the story of being in foster care. All of
the girls experienced multiple foster care placements. Most of
them were sexually abused while in care. Some of the girls
disclosed that they were willing to endure the sexual abuse so
that they would not be moved to yet another home. One girl said
she stayed so that she and not her sister would suffer the
abuse.
Every one of the girls said that this chaos and violence
groomed them to be trafficked. And it makes sense. It makes
sense that a young girl moving through different homes,
different congregate care settings, abused in those placements,
is vulnerable to a trafficker who tells her that she is
beautiful, that she is loved, that he will be her father, her
boyfriend, her Prince Charming and take care of her.
Withelma Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, the powerful advocate and
survivor leader, said that her own experience of 14 different
foster care placements was, in fact, her training ground for
being trafficked. As she notes:
Like me, any youth in foster care becomes accustomed to
adapting to multiple moves from home to home, which
allows us to easily then adapt when traffickers, pimps,
exploiters move us multiple times from hotel to hotel,
city to city, and/or State to State. For myself, as
unfortunate as it is to say, the most consistent
relationship I ever had in care was with my pimp and
his family.
It must be understood that the child welfare to trafficking
pipeline is also a homeless pipeline. So we tell women to run
from abuse, but when girls in care run from abuse, they often
become homeless. They run to shelters or to bus stops or they
loiter on the streets, and it is in those places of
vulnerability that traffickers seduce or coerce them. According
to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 60
percent of runaways who are victims of sex trafficking were in
foster care.
Indeed, homeless children who have run from home or from
foster care to protect themselves because they are LGBTQ youth
or abused youth or both are all at risk. One in five homeless
children report being a victim of trafficking.
We cannot, we cannot continue to disregard the suffering of
our kids. We cannot continue to allow our children to be so
hurt and so invisible that a trafficker is their only hope.
That is why the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims
Prevention and Protection Act of 2017 is critical. Especially
critical is the bill's emphasis on grants for housing and
trauma-informed services.
Safe housing disrupts the pathways to child sex
trafficking. Safe housing gives exploited children an
alternative to the trafficker. And as the bill points out, safe
housing for our exploited children must be specialized and must
be trauma-informed. These girls who have been subject to
repeated rape and abuse need trauma-informed care to heal from
the injuries done to them, but it is not only that they have
been subject to systematic rape; they have also been rendered
property. They require the supports to heal from that kind of
violence and enslavement.
If we are to honor the great abolitionist Frederick
Douglass, if we are to really hold ourselves accountable to the
girls who are turned into sexual property, like the girl in
Compton who tried to escape, then let us do the urgent work of
creating new underground railroads out of this modern day form
of slavery. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Saada Saar follows:]
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----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for your leadership and for
your testimony.
Let me begin, if I could, with some questions. First, Ms.
Becker, if I could start on child soldiering with you. As you
know, our legislation does really try to beef up and
strengthen, as you have pointed out in your testimony, by
providing effective and continuing steps when there is a waiver
so that we don't see an abuse of the waiver; the idea that
government-supported police and the security forces would be
added to the military; and then the accountability in terms of
reporting to Congress, the committees of Congress, in a very
prompt and robust way.
Greg Simpkins and I were in South Sudan last August. We met
with Salva Kiir, five of his generals, his Minister of Defense,
and his Vice President, and really pressed hard on a zero
tolerance policy on sexual abuse, the targeting of vulnerable,
mostly women and children, as well as aid workers and child
soldiering as a huge problem in South Sudan. About 16,000 is
the current estimate. It could be higher or lower, but it is a
major, major league problem. He promised to help on the zero
tolerance policy. We are still waiting with bated breath for
that to be truly implemented, although I think it will. There
are some signs, but it is still not there.
So if you could speak to the language in the bill because,
again, when waivers are provided, you have underscored the
good, the bad, and the ugly with your comments on the DRC,
Rwanda, and Chad. And I think the fact that DR Congo went down
to near zero on recruitment is a major success story. And then,
you know, further down in your testimony, of course, you talk
about how in 60 percent of all cases, according to the Stimson
Center, waivers were used, accounting for 95 percent of the aid
affected by the law, which is the ugly. If you can elaborate on
how you think this legislation might help.
And then I would like to go, if I could, to Melysa Sperber
about progress is lagging in the area of prevention. You point
out that prevention is more than awareness raising. I agree
with that. Systemic causes always need to be addressed if you
want to get rid of the underlying problem. But we have not done
enough even on the awareness raising. So if you could elaborate
on that, both parts of it.
Of course, Mr. Benz, you on the awareness raising as well,
because I do believe that knowledge is power. The more these
young people at the earlier age know what awaits them if they
are runaways or get involved with one of these pimps or
traffickers, that they are inviting hell on Earth into their
lives and that of their friends if they go that path. And of
course, drugs are so often a part of it.
So there needs to be a major effort, I would think,
starting with the President, the Governors, certainly Congress,
and amending the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a
major step in that direction. Maybe there is more that we need
to be doing. But if you could speak to this issue of
prevention.
I still think we lag on prosecution as well as on the area
of protection of the victims, the three Ps of trafficking, but
it seems to me that if you could stop it in the first place,
just like if you look at health, an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure, the more we stop cancer before it starts
or in its early stages, the more likely the trauma will not
follow.
If I could, Ms. Saada Saar, if you could tell us about your
successful efforts to shut down craigslist, an adult services
page, what lessons have we learned to help stop children being
trafficked online. There is a very serious effort being
undertaken by Ann Wagner to look at the CDA to amend it, to
change it so that liability is not sloughed off as it has been
so that Backpage can operate almost with impunity, almost like
a slaver block where women are put online and sold like
commodities and young girls and young boys, so if you could
speak to that. And then I do have many, many other questions.
And I also thought, Ms. Sperber, your point about the
Achilles heel of anti-trafficking efforts is the lack of
evidence. When we did the first Trafficking Victims Protection
Act, we had language in it which we got right from the U.S.
Department of State that said 50,000 people are trafficked into
the United States every year. It was in our findings. It was
wrong. It turned out to be a very bad survey. But I can't tell
you how many people, including the Washington Post, used that
and some other imprecise calculations to mock our efforts on
human trafficking, and they mocked it. Front page above the
fold, left-hand side--I will never forget the article--rather
than covering the silent epidemic against women and children
called human trafficking, because so much of it is hidden, they
looked at a statistic that probably was false and had a great
deal of sport in mocking it.
And I think the more we get it accurate, the more likely we
get more buy-in from people, including the media, which often
ignores this issue majorly. Look over there. We invited every
single solitary press person we could think of, maybe if you
are watching online, to be here to hear what you had to say,
all five of you, and I look over and there is nobody at the
press table. If we were talking about some more trivial matter
that had a greater appeal to the media, they would be lined up.
And this happens all the time. Yeah. Or if we didn't have a
unity here on the legislation Ms. Bass and I have introduced
and several others, including the chairman of this committee,
they would be covering it. Maybe we should start something.
But it is very disappointing because that lack of
visibility in the media then diminishes the impact of
everything we do.
And finally, if I could, Mr. Gehring, just if you could,
for the record, reiterate again just all of you if you would
like to, how important it is to get the TIP Report right. It
was a problem during the Bush administration. I think it became
epidemic in those last 2 years of the Obama administration. And
it is not like we said this in a vacuum. I invited the
Ambassador-at-Large to testify.
We had previous Ambassadors-at-Large testify about how
politicization of the TIP Report was causing others--Thailand,
when you would meet with the TIP leaders in Thailand they would
say, why should we listen to you, although they were listening.
When we look over at Malaysia and they get a bye because of the
TPP.
China which arguably is the worst trafficker on Earth in
terms of the numbers. One reason being sex-selection abortion
which has led to at least 61 million missing girls, because of
that systematic evisceration of the girl child while still in
utero. It is a magnet for trafficking like few other countries
on Earth.
India has a problem with that as well, but nothing like
China. What they do vis-a-vis North Korea is an outrage. Women
make their way into China and they are trafficked. We have had
five hearings in this subcommittee about the trafficking of
women from North Korea. They told their stories. They think
they are relatively free now that they are on the other side of
the border to be met by a broker who then sells her.
So it is a violation of the Refugee Convention on the part
of China and yet they are not Tier 3. That is absurd. No matter
what we are working, in my opinion, with China on, trying to
mitigate the crisis in North Korea or any other issue du jour
with China it should not in any effect what the TIP Report says
about the truth. And whether or not sanctions follow is a call
by the administration.
And I think when you use sanctions you increase the
effectiveness of everything vis-a-vis TIP and the office. When
you don't, people take note of that and say, hmm, sanctions are
there, but they don't utilize them.
So if you could speak to the importance again, and this
would be to the administration now, we thought we had a meeting
a couple of us with Secretary Tillerson, that was going to be
my lead that in South Sudan, comments that I would make, get
the TIP Report right. Listen to those experts at TIP. They eat,
sleep, and breathe the human rights issue. And don't let the
Assistant Secretaries and the bureaus shape it. Get it right
and then move on from there. So those questions, if you could,
and then I will yield to Ms. Bass.
Ms. Becker. Mr. Chairman, thank very much for your
question. I am happy to address in greater detail how the
Frederick Douglass Reauthorizaiton Act will strengthen the
Child Soldiers Prevention Act and address some of the problems
that we have seen over the last few years in implementation.
I think one of the most important aspects, as you
mentioned, is the issue of waivers. Under the Obama
administration we saw waivers being used in the majority of
cases, and oftentimes used for countries that have made little
or no effort to address their child soldier problem.
You mentioned the situation in South Sudan, which is one
that we are very concerned about. South Sudan was actually
making some progress in ending the use of child soldiers until
2013 when the current conflict erupted. Since that time that
progress has completely unraveled, and we have seen child
recruitment skyrocket. And yet, the Obama administration gave
South Sudan waivers under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act for
every year for 5 years.
Another example is Yemen. Before the Houthis overthrew the
government in 2014, the administration had given Yemen full
waivers for every single year, despite virtually no effort by
Yemen to address their child soldiers problem. So the Frederick
Douglass Reauthorization Act, one of the most significant
things that it does in this respect is require that if the
President issues a national security waiver, that he certify to
the appropriate congressional committees that the affected
government is taking effective and continuing steps to address
their problems of child soldiers.
So this will be very important. It preserves some
flexibility in the law. So the President still has the
authority to issue waivers if he believes that it is in the
national interest, but it creates much greater pressure on
these governments to actually take concrete steps to end their
recruitment and use of children. So that is the first thing
that I wanted to address.
The second thing, you also mentioned in your early remarks
changing the definition of which forces would be covered by the
act. Afghanistan has been a problem for the last few years. I
mentioned that child recruitment in Afghanistan doubled between
2014 and 2015.
One of the parties that was recruiting children is the
Afghan Local Police. This is an entity under the Ministry of
Interior, completely government-controlled that has been
recruiting and using children in active combat and in
operations against the Taliban. And yet, because of the word
``police'' in their name, and their status under the Ministry
of Interior, the State Department has refused to consider
Afghanistan as coming under the umbrella of the Child Soldiers
Prevention Act.
So the new amended definition that the Frederick Douglass
Reauthorization Act provides will ensure that these loopholes
don't allow some governments to escape scrutiny in the future.
It will ensure that Afghanistan comes under the umbrella of the
bill, which will be very important.
A third important provision of the Frederick Douglass
Reauthorization Act is to specify a timeframe of 45 days after
the State Department issues its list of what governments are
involved in the use of child soldiers, the Secretary of State
will have 45 days to notify those governments that they are
subject to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act and possible
withholding of military assistance. And that notification
period is really important and an important improvement.
And then finally, the original Child Soldiers Prevention
Act only required annual reporting on implementation for the
first 5 years of implementation. We have passed that date. And
yet, we need to know how the law is being implemented. And very
significantly the Frederick Douglass Reauthorization Act will
not only continue to require annual reports, but it will also
require much more transparency over what amount of aid has been
allowed to go to countries using child soldiers under the use
of waivers and how much has been withheld.
And that is going to be of great use to both Congress and
the public to be able to tell whether this law is being used
for its intended purpose or not.
So these are four very important improvements that are
being put forward in the new act. Thank you.
Ms. Sperber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for those important
questions. We at ATEST agree that we are lagging in all three
Ps. And so we certainly encourage the U.S. Government to
continue their emphasis on prosecution, protection, and
prevention. And yet we are so pleased to see the committee and
the bill's sponsors put an emphasis on prevention which we see
as being really the greatest gap in our work on human
trafficking in the United States and overseas.
We also agree we could do more to raise awareness and that
we should be doing more. We would point to a huge critical
opportunity to focus on the risks of trafficking within global
supply chains of both labor and sex trafficking. We would look
to programs like The Coalition for Immokalee Workers' Fair Food
Program as an excellent model in the United States, and also
increasingly recognized worldwide as one that would reduce risk
for trafficking and put workers and survivors squarely at the
center of enforcing those mechanisms.
We also believe public-private partnerships are
instrumental in raising awareness, and would look to efforts
like the Blue Campaign, which has had real positive impact in
raising awareness around the United States.
Most important for us, though, we want to see that where
awareness is raised, there are complementary efforts to invest
in services, to ensure that those survivors who come out of the
shadows to demand services because of this awareness are met
with a specialized response to their very significant needs.
And so we see increasingly that where there are awareness
efforts made there are demands for services, and that is a
consequence of the success of those efforts. But we also see
that service providers have increasing wait lists and that they
don't have the training and capacity they need to meet that
demand. And so we would hope to see that balance achieved as we
move forward.
On prevention, we absolutely agree with you that it is so
necessary to address the root causes of trafficking, which are
so complex and rest on so many different interrelated forms of
exploitation, whether it is discrimination, gender, gender-
based violence, or the criminal justice system's impact on
youth, particularly those of color, those who are coming out of
systems like foster care and child welfare that are putting
them at greater risk rather than strengthening them and
reducing their vulnerabilities.
And so we hope to see more attention and investment paid in
those root causes. There are two areas that we see as
promising. The first is the integration of trafficking within
other programs. Things like what is happening at USAID, where
they have implemented counter trafficking in persons policy
that is applied across the agency. We are very pleased to see
the provisions in the reauthorization to increase transparency
around those expenditures at USAID so we have a greater
understanding of the impact that they are achieving, where
there are gaps, and what we can do to better address those
gaps.
We also want to ensure that within the humanitarian context
nothing is done to inadvertently heighten the risks of
trafficking. We saw some risk of that after the earthquake in
Haiti. And it was so wonderful that there was a supplementary
appropriation made that enabled the State Department to focus
specifically on trafficking. We would hope to see that happen
after disasters, whether manmade or environmental, in the
future, because we do know that vulnerability goes up in those
crisis situations.
And then finally, I would note the importance of listening
to the U.S. Advisory Council on trafficking. The survivors who
have been appointed to that council are incredible experts and
they point to prevention and the need to address root causes.
And so I think that if we have all of the expertise and the
evidence in place to tell us that this is really the direction
we can and should be going in.
And then on your point on data, Mr. Chairman, it is so
difficult to get ahold of the scope of this crime because it is
underground and because it is in the shadows. And we have
suffered, as you noted, from numbers that have misinformed the
direction that our policy should go in.
We see two promising ways or bright spots that we can look
to. The first as you noted, is the International Labor Affairs
Bureau at the Department of Labor. We see it as really a gold
standard in terms of their approach to monitoring and
evaluation. And we believe we can really look to the efforts
that they have made that have touched nearly 2 million children
worldwide in reducing their vulnerability. We hope to see a lot
of practices they have put in place to measure the investments
that they have made in combating the worst forms of child labor
replicated in other agencies and on other programs.
And then finally, we are looking forward to the work that
the End Modern Slavery Initiative will achieve. We were very
supportive of the bill that came out of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee last year and grateful for the leadership
of that committee and then of Congress in authorizing EMSI and
the National Defense Authorization Act. And we believe that
EMSI's focus on measuring impact and looking especially at the
regions and industry where trafficking has the highest
prevalence will yield real lessons for us on where we can go
next and how we can better inform the direction of our
investments, make them more effective, learn what we can do to
scale and replicate what is working, and learn from what is not
working.
And so, I do think we have some ways that we can hopefully
overcome this Achilles heel that has been plaguing this field
and that hopefully in future iterations of this hearing and of
TVPRA reauthorizations we will be able to bring forward really
credible data that will not only inform policymakers like
yourself, but also the public and the media so that they can
report on what we believe is one of the most consequential
human rights violations of our generation. Thank you.
Ms. Saada Saar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Benz. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I have say I love
your passion on this subject. I am very passionate about this
subject also.
And of course it would come as no surprise as someone who
founded an organization in his name. I am very excited that you
have decided to name the Trafficking Victims Protection Act
after Frederick Douglass.
But I really believe the addition of the word prevention
can change the paradigm of how we approach this issue of human
trafficking, not only in the United States, but all over the
world.
We have been thinking about this for a long time. I stay up
nights thinking about this and how we can create a systematic
approach to prevention so that we have children that are living
free of this problem. We have addressed it in four ways with a
program that we launched in California last year called
PROTECT. I will just go over real quickly what those four
components are.
First of all, we start with a protocol that community
members agree upon, law enforcement, service agencies, NGOs,
schools. This allows everyone to get on the same page. In my
experience in addressing this issue across the United States,
communities have not necessarily been on the same page when we
are approaching this issue.
We have relied in a lot of ways on law enforcement and
service agencies to take the lead and do the work on this
issue, where faith-based organizations and schools and parents
have been asking the question how can I help? What can I do? I
want to make a difference in this field. This is a way of
starting.
The next component is training, training teachers, and
training professionals in the community on this subject because
those that are supervisors of young people are first
responders. And if we are able to identify this early enough,
we can reduce the amount of harm that is done and help someone
get out of this sooner.
The next piece is education. And we start education in
grade 5. Again, this is a general approach to knowing who is
allowed in your own boundaries. We go to 7, 9 and 11. We want
young people not only to understand the nature of human
trafficking, but we also want them to understand the historical
connection to slavery.
This matters in a lot of ways, not only so they can see the
connections between historical slavery and human trafficking,
but also so they can see that this problem of slavery has
plagued human kind for thousands of years and there is not
necessarily a solution available that is going to make it
disappear overnight. And so we can convince young people that
this a long-term approach and how do we approach it in the
long-term.
The last piece is research. We have a University partner in
our California project, Sacramento State University and they
are helping us create new data. One day we will be able to do
it, create correlations between how much education and training
we do equals X amount fewer of people that are trafficked in
our community.
We don't know that number because we don't know how many
people are trafficked in our community today. So we are
starting with gathering data that allows us to understand that
young people understand material, teachers understand material,
and we can find out how we have reduced the vulnerability of
children to this issue, to this problem and, to this threat in
our communities.
So that is the way we envision how the addition of
prevention and a new focus on prevention can change the
paradigm of what we are doing on this issue.
Ms. Saada Saar. Mr. Chairman, you and I have a very deep
abiding belief in human rights. And as a human rights lawyer
what I have learned, what I have been taught, is that the abuse
is maintained and continued if there is impunity. And right now
we deal with the situation of impunity in the way that our
children in this country are purchased for sex.
In most situations when children are purchased for sex, the
buyer is not even arrested. And when the buyer is arrested, it
is usually on solicitation misdemeanor, not on any form of
child sexual abuse. We continue to contemplate this issue
within the context of vice and prostitution. Even though it is
happening to these kids has nothing to do with vice or
prostitution. This is a form of child sexual abuse. And yet,
the perpetrators are not treated in that way.
We have created a legal distinction and a cultural
distinction between raping a child and paying to rape a child.
And in the latter instance, there is full impunity for that
crime. I have come to believe very deeply that if we want to
stem the epidemic of child sex trafficking in this country we
must begin to understand this and enforce this as statutory
rape. We cannot continue a situation where when buyers purchase
our children they are set free or simply receive a slap on the
hand.
If we begin to prosecute buyers for statutory rape, for
sexual assault of a minor, if we put them on the sex offender
registry. If we recognize that what they do in any other
context is recognized as child rape. If we create these new
norms of understanding that this is not about child
prostitution, that this is child rape and the perpetrators have
to be treated accordingly, that is when we will see a shift.
And until then, I don't think that anything will have the
same impact. This is about a culture of impunity that allows
these human rights abuses against our children to continue.
Mr. Smith. Thank you so much for that.
And all of your points were extremely well taken. When we
were working on the definition, and the Palermo Protocol
couldn't be clearer, that anyone who has not attained the age
of 18, which is our definition as well, by definition if just
one commercial sex act that person is a trafficking victim.
Unfortunately, many of our local jurisdictions don't recognize
that. And since most of the prosecution is at the local level,
you are right, the solicitation charge as opposed to the child
rape charge is what sticks. And I think that culture has to
change and has to change immediately.
The law on the Federal level I think gets it right. We can
always do more, but we need to be admonishing the States to
comport to that definition as quickly as possible. Many have in
their State statute like New Jersey's, but we need to do more.
Thank you for that admonishment.
Ms. Bass.
Ms. Bass. Well, let me thank all of the panelists for some
outstanding contributions to this issue.
I wanted to begin with Mr. Gehring. You have said that you
have seen a difference in how the report and the ranking and
the tier level actually makes a difference. And I was wondering
if you could expand on that some more. And along with that, I
wanted to know--you also mentioned that the ranking, the tier
ranking was political in some instances. And with that in mind
I wanted to know what your opinion of the U.S. ranking is?
Mr. Gehring. Thank you for the question, Ms. Bass. I do
want to be very clear about one thing, I think that for the
most part the Trafficking in Persons Office and the TIP Report
gets it right.
Ms. Bass. Right. That was clear.
Mr. Gehring. I think that they do a tremendous job on the
majority of the rankings, and especially the narratives. And
the dedicated staff at that office represent the very best of
American ideals and values.
I would also say that the 2015, 2016 report, those were
quite controversial on especially a few countries.
So I would also caution against this upcoming report being
vindictive against those past years, right? Because that
perpetuates the politicization of the report. So we don't way
to say, well, we didn't those guys on Tier 3 last year or, 2
years ago, but we are going to get them this year. I don't
think that is helpful.
And the tension that exists between the regional bureaus
and the Trafficking in Persons office is a natural one, right?
The regional bureaus are dealing with broad----
Ms. Bass. My question was you said that you have seen where
the report makes an actual difference. And I was wanting to
know if you would give me some examples of where you saw it
makes an actual difference.
Mr. Gehring. Yes, we have an office in the Philippines that
for 12 years focused on commercial sexual exploitation of
children. And 7 years ago the Philippines was ranked on the
Tier 2 Watch List. And based on our experience, based on the
case work that we worked in partnership with the Philippines
National Police, children were openly exploited.
But that government has made tremendous progress on
addressing commercial sexual exploitation.
Ms. Bass. What does he do, kill everybody?
Mr. Gehring. Not withstanding many of the other human
rights abuses that still exist in the country. So I think that
is an important distinction to highlight is that we don't have
to wait until a country solves all of its poverty or all of its
human rights abuses before it can start protecting children.
And we have seen the Philippines do a tremendous job on that
specific crime.
Last year in the 2016 report, they received their first
Tier 1 ranking which we believed is an appropriate ranking
based on the progress----
Ms. Bass. But did you think they made that progress because
of their ranking in the report?
Mr. Gehring. Indeed. In 2010 when they were at risk of
losing a significant amount of foreign aid, this is anecdotal
evidence, from our case work in our offices there, we had the
Philippines Government coming to our offices there asking what
can we do to improve our tier ranking? What actionable steps do
we need to take? And I think that is where the TIP Report can
be extremely useful. That is what you want the TIP Report to
do. It is a tool that is used to spur government to action. It
is not the end result in itself to get a country onto a Tier 2
Watch List or on Tier 3. You want that to be a prod for them to
make concrete and credible evidence on how they are protecting
citizens.
Ms. Bass. And our ranking, the U.S.?
Mr. Gehring. I appreciate the question, but I would
actually probably defer to my other panelists who work on
domestic issues. IJM's expertise is on international issues,
but I think there are many others on the panel who can speak to
the U.S. Government's ranking.
Ms. Bass. Ms. Becker, you were talking about child
soldiers. And you mentioned two countries that Obama waived,
you mentioned South Sudan and Yemen. What exactly is the
waiver? What does the waiver say? Do you know?
Ms. Becker. Sure. Thank you Ranking Member Bass.
So the waiver provision allows the President to invoke
national security interests to basically bypass the prohibition
that is in the Child Soldiers Prevention Act.
So with no waiver it means that certain categories of
military assistance are automatically withheld from a
government that has been listed by the State Department of
being involved in the use of child soldiers. But if there is a
waiver from the President, it means that that assistance,
whether it is foreign military financing or military training,
or direct commercial sales is allowed to continue, even if the
country has taken no action to address child soldiers.
Ms. Bass. So in your experience with child soldiers, short
of kidnap or force, what drives them, what drives the children
to become child soldiers?
Ms. Becker. That is an excellent question. What we have
seen in our research at Human Rights Watch is that there is a
whole continuum of ways that children end up in governmental,
armed forces, paramilitaries, or rebel groups. So at one
extreme you have children who are literally abducted from their
homes, abducted from their schools, threatened with death if
they don't join.
In other cases, we see children who are coerced, or
threatened, or, for example when I did research on Burma, I
found that there were boys that were told that if they didn't
have an identity card, they would have to go to jail. But if
they didn't want to go to jail they could join the army
instead. And that actually wasn't true, but it was a form of
coercion to make these boys choose the army.
In some cases, children, especially if they have seen
atrocities against their family or against their community, may
be motivated to join armed groups or armed forces out of
revenge. They want to protect their community. They want
revenge for abuses against their loved ones.
Then you also have children who are lured in by promises.
Promises of salary, promises of education, lured by status,
wanting to be seen in the uniform or carrying weapons, maybe
they see others in their community who have joined. But
oftentimes these children have no idea of what the reality of
military service is or the kind of danger they will find
themselves in.
Ms. Bass. Human Rights Watch looks at conditions in the
U.S., correct?
Ms. Becker. That is right, we do.
Ms. Bass. Do you look at gangs in the U.S. and why children
here join gangs?
Ms. Becker. Human Rights Watch has not looked at youth and
children joining gangs in the United States, but there has been
excellent research by other organizations that draws the
parallels between children who join gangs and children who join
armed forces.
In Brazil for example, children who join the gangs in
Brazilian favelas, their profile is very similar to what you
see for children joining armed groups in conflict countries.
And in fact, their mortality rate is higher than in many
conflict countries.
Ms. Bass. Well, it is interesting how we view child
soldiers in other countries than the level of empathy and
concern, but what draws kids to join, the ones that aren't
forced we--what happens in our country we don't seem to have--
we don't look in that same way at all.
Where I know that one of the things that draws kids to join
gangs in communities is their safety. It is a job, it is
employment, surrogate family, kids that fall between the
cracks. But our view here is to incarcerate them as opposed to
address the root cause reasons for them joining a gang.
Ms. Saada Saar, you talked about trauma informed care. I
was wondering if you could describe what trauma informed care
means?
Ms. Saada Saar. It is a term that does get tossed around
very loosely. I think what the elements that I consider to be
critical to trauma informed care is that we are not talking
about getting a bunch of girls to do yoga classes and that
counts as trauma informed care, or to make jewelry.
Trauma informed care is about involving a comprehensive
systematic approach to healing and well-being. And so when we
think about a comprehensive approach, it is not a 30-day
program. It is a program that stretches out from 6 months to a
year that is both intensive and has aftercare, that is
inclusive of professionals, as well as those who are peer
counselors. That type of comprehensiveness, that type of
recognition that the process of healing is not short term but
long term. The recognition that healing can only happen when
there is the stabilization of the individual.
Trauma informed understands especially in this context that
it is not only about healing from the sexual violence, but
again from the condition of being made into property.
Trauma informed care for our children I think also has to
have a very keen eye toward the need for educational
resiliency. That we are talking about girls who instead of
going to school have been bought and sold. Boys who instead of
being in school have been made into the sexual property of
another. It is critical that as part of a healing process that
is comprehensive and trauma informed, that they be able to
reclaim themselves as learners, that they be part of an
educational process that allows them to be whole and to thrive.
Ms. Bass. So I am going to ask you in a minute what you
think of our ranking on the tier system. But I want you also to
talk about the child welfare system, because one of the
problems I have with us here is the definition of child abuse
and child neglect, it has to be a caregiver, a parent. And if
you are a pimp you don't fall into that system, therefore the
girls or the boys do not receive the same type of protection.
And over the last few years we have tried to change that. I
don't know if the work we have done here has actually worked,
has actually been implemented, meaning in cities and States. If
we view the children who are trafficked--we send them to jail,
we arrest them and view them as prostitutes. And in some places
like Los Angeles for example we are not doing that anymore,
supposedly.
So my question is about how we view by definition who these
children are. Are they now being considered as part of the
child welfare system or are they still falling through the
cracks?
Ms. Saada Saar. I think there is a real need to do an audit
around that. I don't think we know. And I think it is
absolutely critical that we be able to understand whether or
not the law that was changed to recognize that, it is not only
abuse by the caregiver or legal guardian but that the
trafficker has to be contemplated as having some form of
custody over the child and that the child has to be recognized
as being under the purview and protection of child welfare
services. We have to get at that.
I know that when we look at certain States that made that
change, for example in Florida, we did see a real
implementation of how to ensure that children who were being
trafficked were in fact contemplated as child welfare kids.
I think the other piece that is important to surface when
we talk about child welfare is that not only must child welfare
take responsibility for our kids who are being bought and sold,
but it is also important to look at this issue of multiple
placements.
Ms. Bass. Right.
Ms. Saada Saar. Because it really is the multiple
placements that especially our girls endure that render them so
absolutely vulnerable. What is happening that a girl can be
subject to anywhere from 10 to 14 placements?
Ms. Bass. I have met girls that were placed 66 times.
Ms. Saada Saar. It is unacceptable. And so I think part of
how we talk about reforms to child welfare we have to center it
around ensuring that our children who are bought and sold are
in fact protected under child welfare. But we also have to get
to this issue of multiple placements.
And then I think the other piece that is really important
here that speaks to criminalization is that if we see the kids
under the protection of child welfare, that child welfare ought
to have influence and guidance in what happens to the girl as
opposed to the juvenile justice system. Right?
That if we really do recognize that the girl is being
abused, that that is in the purview for child welfare as
opposed to juvenile justice. And what we have seen happen way
too often is that our children who are being bought and sold
are being displaced into the juvenile justice system as opposed
to child welfare or the public health system generally.
Ms. Bass. I think what is so powerful about this to me is
the statistics you said from 50 to the 90 percent, if you are
in the child welfare system, the government is your parent and
the government is responsible for you. So if you get trafficked
and you are under the care of the government, that is a whole
other ball game than a random child that is kidnapped or a
random child on the street.
And the government doesn't have any responsibility for
that, which is why I raise where is our ranking on the tier
report. Considering we rank ourselves, we rank ourselves best,
which I think that is really a major contradiction that we need
to look at ourselves a lot more.
I wanted to ask you about the type of services girls from
the foster care system might need that might be different from
a woman or a child that was from another country and was
trafficked for their labor. Can you lump it all together and
can you provide services to the person from another country who
was labor trafficked and a girl in foster care, is it all the
same in terms of service provision?
Ms. Saada Saar. It is not all the same. And I think we make
a real mistake in conflating all of those conditions. I will
say to you that what is very clear to me is that our girls--and
it is mostly girls--who are at the intersection of child
welfare and child trafficking are also involved in juvenile
justice. And so when we talk about child sex trafficking in
this country, it includes those systems that have been very
dangerous for our kids. That is not true with labor
trafficking, right? There isn't necessarily the involvement in
criminalization or the experience of being in child welfare
made vulnerable because of multiple placements and then sold.
It is important to acknowledge, and it is not at the
exclusion of understanding--this is not an Olympics of
suffering, it is simply to say that there are distinct
experiences and particular interactions with certain child-
serving systems that are failing our kids that are part of the
experience of child sex trafficking that we have to be able to
distinctly address if we want our kids to heal.
The experience alone of a girl who has been put into 60
placements or more, then bought and sold and then arrested on
charges of child prostitution is a particular experience of
suffering, it is an indictment on our child-serving systems
that we must be able to address in a very distinct and
comprehensive way.
Ms. Bass. So here we are in DC, and there has been a number
of reports lately about missing girls. In California, there is
a Web site from the child welfare system where you can see the
missing children.
What is the situation in DC, if you are familiar with it?
There are a number of girls, they don't know where they are.
Ms. Saada Saar. Look, you know, there is a deep belief that
I have that because of the age of those girls, because of the
vulnerability of those girls, that they are the girls who are
being bought and sold in this city. I have met too many girls
here and throughout the country who have run away from home
because of abuse at home or in the foster care system. They are
considered runaways, but there is not enough effort to look at
what has happened to them to understand that those runaways are
the girls who are being bought and sold.
And it saddens me that the majority of those girls, whether
here or other parts of our country are Black and Brown girls.
And that too often there are ways that when Black and Brown
girls are subject to violence, to sexual violence especially,
they are not construed as victims. They are construed and
criminals, as child prostitutes.
And so I really hope that we can instead of casting off the
missing girls in DC as just runaways who don't want to be home
anymore, we can understand that those girls stories are so
representative of what we see everywhere. That those girls are
the vulnerable girls who are being trafficked and who are not
bad girls, who are not simply to be dismissed as runaway girls,
who are girls in places of extreme sexual violence. And they
have to be acknowledged for the kind of vulnerability and
suffering that they are in right now.
Ms. Bass. And frankly, if a girl runs away, that doesn't
mean that she wants to be trafficked. You can run away and wind
up in circumstances that you didn't plan on being in.
In Los Angeles we had a situation, these were not girls,
they were women, who had been missing. And the community
organized and begged the police department to search for the
women, and after a while began to believe that was a serial
killer. No one believe the community for about 10 or 15 years.
They just convicted the guy who continued to kill for 10 to 15
years more and found out that in fact there was a serial
killer. I think it was over 30 women that were killed.
So I will just conclude by asking you about what our
ranking is on the tier system.
Ms. Saada Saar. Well, I hope that we can reexamine that
ranking in light of the criminalization that happens to our
kids who are being trafficked. It makes no sense to me that in
this country we are in a situation, especially against the
legal backdrop of the TVPA that recognizes a minor who is
involved in commercial sexual exploitation is per se a victim
of trafficking.
I don't understand how it can be allowed that in any State
or locality, especially those drawing down on TVPA funding,
that there is any situation of one child being arrested on
child prostitution charges. The idea that in this country we
are criminalizing our children who are being subject to
commercial rape is unacceptable, is a human rights violation.
And I think the other area of my concern as it relates to
our ranking is not only the criminalization of our children who
are being exploited, but also as we talked about the full
impunity for those who are raping our kids. Any situation again
where we have individuals who in another context would be
considered to be committing statutory rape, but in this context
of purchasing a child and raping that child, and given full
impunity, we have to interrogate the norms around that.
We have to ask why have we allowed a culture of impunity
around what happens to these kids? And how are we not holding
ourselves more accountable to that and ending that if we are
Tier 1?
Mr. Smith. I would like to yield to Ann Wagner. And thank
her for taking the time to come out.
She is the sponsor of a new bill, the Allow States and
Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017. Last year
she was the author of the SAVE Act, which became a law. And I
would point out that Karen Bass was the author of the
Strengthening Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act, which
also became law.
So Ms. Wagner, please proceed.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the
ranking member too who has been a tremendous leader on this
issue and so many things that we have all worked collectively
to champion.
I am grateful for this hearing and to have the opportunity
to visit with the witnesses and just thank you all for working
so tirelessly to complete the Frederick Douglass Trafficking
Victims Prevention and Protection Act.
The lifelong work to combat human trafficking is an
inspiration to me personally. And I am grateful for the
opportunity to be an original cosponsor of this legislation. It
is fitting, I think, that the bill is actually named after
Frederick Douglass, a great pioneer of liberty and humanity. A
true leader who, to this day, continues, I believe, to teach us
about the meaning of justice.
It is my particular honor to offer an amendment that will
ensure that countries on the TIP Report's Tier 2 Watch List
take concrete actions to combat human trafficking. I had the
great privilege of serving as a United States Ambassador in
Western Europe from 2005 to 2009. And as a former U.S.
Ambassador, I worked a great deal on numerous TIP Reports.
And so, I will be offering this amendment at markup. It
will also require the State Department to justify a country's
ranking, linking its actual actions to the minimum standards
enumerated in section 108.
Together, we will strengthen the TIP program and hold
countries accountable for enabling human trafficking. I believe
that the passing TVPA, which has been with us so proudly since
the year 2000, and this is year 2017, is going to help prevent
vulnerable members of our society from being victimized in the
first place and helps more survivors successfully reintegrate
into normal life.
I thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership and
for advancing what I believe is our global mission both
international and domestic to eradicate modern slavery.
Ms. Sperber, as you know, I have introduced the Trafficking
Survivors Relief Act, which will give trafficking victims a
pathway to petition the courts to have their criminal records
cleared for offenses that were a direct result of being
trafficked.
How important are vacater laws to helping get survivors
back on their feet?
Ms. Sperber. Thank you so much for the important question,
Mrs. Wagner, and for your services as an Ambassador in Western
Europe, and your leadership on human trafficking.
I think the importance of vacature laws is immeasurable. As
Malika so articulately described, there is a need for
comprehensive trauma informed services. And I think a part of
the spectrum of services that we need to offer to survivors
includes legal services for not only vacating convictions, but
for defending survivors if there are criminal charges pending,
if there are civil needs for restitution, or immigration
services.
But importantly, in order for those legal services to have
a path forward, the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act needs to
be enacted. Because right now, survivors are really impeded
from healing if they aren't able to obtain employment, and if
they still carry with them the charges and the convictions that
are a direct result, as you said, of their victimization by
traffickers.
And so, we really hope to see that law enacted because it
will be transformative for survivors. We know that there are
survivors who, as one survivor has told me, has a conviction
that is like a life sentence because she can no longer get
gainful employment. She has been afforded opportunities that
are then taken away from her because of these convictions,
which were as a result of her having been trafficked across
multiple State lines as a child.
And so, we need to enable them to overcome those
convictions. And I think the Frederick Douglass Reauthorization
is a really amazing complement to the Survivors Relief Act
because it also affords Health and Human Services the
opportunity to provide additional support for survivors who are
seeking professional development, whether it is on resume
creation or vocational skills, a whole range of services that
will be a really important complement to the Survivors Relief
Act.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank you, Ms. Sperber. And I agree
wholeheartedly. Having met with so many survivors that are
suffering, whether it has to do with employment, housing, going
back to school, vocational training, credit, things of this
nature, the relief act will apply to noncriminal offenses and
give the court the opportunity to vacate those offenses that
really pertain specifically to them being victims of
trafficking.
Things like the Mann Act. It could be money laundering. It
could be there are new prostitution. There could be numerous
charges of a noncriminal offense that most of these women or
sometimes children carried over, still carry on their record
and have been prohibitive for them as they try to turn that
page as a survivor and start a new life.
I am very hopeful that we will be--not just introducing but
seeing this bill for the first time on the House in late May.
We are excited about the opportunities there to move this and
advance it forward.
Mr. Gehring, I salute IJM's phenomenal work. And I am
wondering whether there are specific places around the world
where you see political will mounting to address sex
trafficking and forced labor. What are the primary obstacles
facing countries also on the Tier 2 Watch List in seriously
combatting trafficking?
Mr. Gehring. Thank you, Congresswoman Wagner, and thank you
for the kind words about IJM.
Your question on where we see political will building in
countries. I mentioned the enormous progress that the
Philippines has made. I would echo that to Cambodia as well and
their ability to address commercial sexual exploitation of
children. And this is not to say that the issues are solved in
these countries right?
Cambodia still needs to maintain the gains that they have
made and also address cross border labor trafficking. The
Philippines faces a rising criminal industry of online sexual
exploitations. These are two examples where we see our partners
in the government have made significant steps on addressing a
certain type of trafficking.
I think that political will is to be applauded. And I think
it is important that the TIP Report, as a tool, not only just
name and shame countries, but also recognizes the progress and
the gains that have been made. Lest countries get weary of
always being pointed out and not given credit for the progress
that they have made.
Mrs. Wagner. What are some of the other obstacles, and I
open it to any of you that you think faced these countries on
the Tier 2 Watch List from moving forward and combatting
trafficking?
Anyone else have a comment on that?
I will move on. And, Mr. Benz, we both know that education
and awareness are critical to ending human trafficking in
America. How can the U.S. better support education and training
programs that promote prevention and detection?
Mr. Benz. Well, I think that funding is a big part of this.
There has not been, as far as I know, since the TVPA of 2000,
any significant funding for prevention education. There has
been training for professionals. There hasn't been significant
training for educators.
So I think funding is a big part of it, and I think that
understanding the value of bringing education into public
schools will be helpful, and I think the naming of this bill is
a big part of that, beginning to reframe how we address this
issue, not just from a law enforcement point of view and a
survivor service point of view, but from a preventative
standpoint as well.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank you. And I am going to close, Mr.
Chairman, on a story about one of my many efforts toward
education and awareness when it comes to what I call modern day
sex slavery.
I am not one who believes that we can legislate away
society's ills, that education and awareness are absolutely
critical, in all areas, whether I am dealing with hotels and
convention bureaus, whether I am dealing with different
transportation outlets. I just did a great event with Truckers
Against Trafficking, and NATSO. I am a big believer in dealing
with those that on the frontlines, our hospitals, our nurses,
our emergency rooms. So many I think across our country that
need to have the kind of education and awareness, and I believe
it extends to our educators, too.
I had the great privilege, Mr. Chairman, a year or so ago,
of pulling together every single public school in my district,
Missouri's 2nd Congressional District. I first started with the
superintendents and then set up a program of training. The
Department of Education came out, along with others in the
industry, did two sessions. They were attended by about 50 each
of frontline high school and junior high personnel.
These were school nurses and counselors and teachers and
others that came from the educational sphere. There were
private schools and every one with I think the exception of one
of our public schools was there in this day of training, two
different sessions, where we talked to the educators about the
signs to look for in terms of who may fall victim and prey to
human trafficking. We talked about the services that were
available. We talked about then ratcheting it up to programs
where we are not just doing programs and assemblies on bullying
and safe space and things of that nature, heroin, cocaine,
things that are very important, opoid abuse, but also on sex
trafficking, so that children can be safe and that they are all
aware of what is out there.
In every single one of our communities, in every single one
of our cul-de-sacs, the scourge of sex trafficking lives, and
it is absolutely untenable in the United States of America that
this happens every single day to our children, to our women, to
our girls, to our boys.
So I am a big believer in education and awareness. I will
continue to put forward good commonsense legislation and hold
our agencies like the Department of Justice, Mr. Chairman, and
others, accountable for the laws that are signed by our
President. I have legislation signed by President Obama, and I
hope to have future legislation signed by President Trump.
But education and awareness are very key. And I think it is
incumbent upon leaders like myself and my colleagues to use the
tools that are out there and bringing people together to keep
our children safe.
Yes, Mr. Gehring.
Mr. Gehring. Just in relation to your question about a Tier
2 Watch List, and forgive the delay, and also in relation to
the amendment that you plan on offering specifically around
concrete actions, I think that is extraordinarily important.
And I think what is especially helpful too is to define what
concrete actions are, what credible evidence is, and I think
that within that you will get to a diagnosis of what you are
hoping to get is what do the Tier 2 Watch List countries
struggle with?
And, indeed, it is probably what countries on the Tier 2
Watch List, Tier 3, and indeed, also in Tier 1, that would say
some indicators for that are, are there active investigations
being conducted? Are there arrests? Are there convictions? Are
trainings being provided? Are services to survivors being
provided? Those are very tangible things that I think should
guide the tier rankings of each country, and I think that those
actions within that list are what Tier 2 Watch List and many
other countries struggle to do well.
Mrs. Wagner. You are absolutely right. I thank you very
much, Mr. Gehring.
And I thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership.
I thank the ranking member for letting me follow her in her
questioning, and without further adieu, I better head back over
to my Financial Services Committee, so I thank you all so very
much for what you do.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mrs. Wagner, for your
leadership and for taking the time to be here.
Mr. Gehring, I think you made an excellent point about the
Philippines when asked what country has the TIP Report and the
threat of sanctions, as well as all the positives, technical
support that is provided on how to craft good policy working
with our Embassy and with the TIP office.
Piero Tozzi and I after the typhoon hit in 2013, November
2013, Haiyan, went over there. I led a congressional
delegation. Our military did an extraordinarily good job. The
Abraham Lincoln was there, the military. The Marines were there
providing food, clothing, shelter.
But everywhere we went, we went with two cabinet officers.
I obviously, as did Piero, brought up trafficking in persons. I
was amazed the impact that the U.S. Government has had by being
faithful in defending, and working on behalf of, potential
victims, particularly children, how clued-in the leadership was
of the Philippines.
So the TIP office, for the record, and the TIP Report I
think has a very laudatory, you know it was Natan Sharansky who
said you can't fight a human rights abuse if you don't first
chronicle it and do it with great, great accuracy. So that is
why the accuracy issue is so important, as you pointed out.
I would note for the record that in the early years of the
TIP Report, which as you all know has prescribed minimum
standards which we have updated and made stronger and better
over the years, both Israel and South Korea were on Tier 3,
subject to sanctions where they could lose security aid and
other kinds of assistance, two of our closest allies in the
world, the Bush administration put them on Tier 3.
And I met with the Ambassador to Israel frequently and the
South Korean Ambassador who wanted to get off tout de suite, as
quickly as they could get off it. And they took very, very
significant actions.
The South Koreans passed a number of laws that looked just
like ours, and perhaps even better in some cases; and the
brothels in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel were shut down,
and the women who had been exploited were liberated.
It shows that it works, so another couple of examples. But
it has to be, that is why our appeal to the new administration
is, as we did to the previous administration which fell on some
deaf ears, get it right. Just tell the truth. Speak truth to
power. And all five of you have done so very, very effectively
today to this subcommittee and by extension to the Congress and
American people.
So I want to thank you so very, very much, and again
getting back to your original testimony, Mr. Benz, when you
said knowledge makes a man unfit and, of course, we would add a
woman as well, unfit to be a slave, and that it is easier to
build strong children than to repair a broken man or women.
Thank you for your testimony and your leadership.
And tomorrow in this committee here, we will mark up the
bill. It has been referred to several other committees. We will
be working with the chairman and the subcommittee chairman and,
of course, Kevin McCarthy who has a very strong and passionate
heart for ending human trafficking to get this bill on the
floor as quickly as possible.
The original TVPA, Trafficking Victims Protection Act, was
referred to 4 committees and 11 subcommittees. Many thought
that was the death knell for it because we would never get it
out of these committees, but we did just by working
painstakingly with the leadership. And one by one it was
released, either waived or marked up, and this bill will move,
I think, very, very quickly, hopefully, to the President's
desk.
Thank you so very much. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:43 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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