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14 April 2008
Ambassador Lagon Discusses How To Combat Human Trafficking
Ask America video webchat transcript, April 10
Ambassador Mark P. Lagon, director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP), discussed strategies to help fight modern-day slavery around the world in an April 10 Ask America video webchat.
Following is the transcript:
(begin transcript)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of International Information Programs
Ask America Webchat Transcript
Audio Transcription on Eradicating Modern-Day Trafficking
Guest: Ambassador Mark Lagon
Date: April 10, 2008
Time: 10:00 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT)
Webchat Moderator: Welcome to today's video webchat with Ambassador Mark Lagon. We are accepting your questions now. If you have any questions about how the webchat works, please ask and we will assist you.
To submit a question, simply type into the space provided at the bottom of this chat "pod". Then press the button to the right. Your question will go into the queue of questions for Ambassador Lagon.
Webchat Moderator: If you are just joining us, welcome! The chat will begin at 1400 GMT 10:00 EDT.
(Audio Transcription) Webchat Moderator: Welcome to today's web conference with Mark Lagon. I am Mark Betka the moderator and I am with the Bureau of International Information Programs here in Washington. For those of you joining us for the first time, there are several ways in which you can participate in today's web chat.
You will see and hear the Ambassador deliver a short presentation. If you are unable to hear the Ambassador, please follow the live captioning that you can see just below the two video pods in the left corner of the screen.
Following the presentation, we will change the layout of the screen and he will begin taking your questions. He will take your questions via the chat pod. The chat pod is just to the right of the video. If you place your cursor into the small space at the bottom of that pod, you'll be able to type a question, click the submit button and your question will go into the queue for the Ambassador. Mr. Ambassador thank you for joining us today--we'll begin your presentation now.
Ambassador Mark P Lagon: I appreciate it. Thank you for joining me this morning in the spirit of partnership for an important dialogue on eradicating modern day trafficking. My role and the role of my office is playing the leading role in the U.S. government's effort to combat this problem. I hope to discuss together how we can find ways to eliminate the threat human trafficking poses to our global community.
Every day all over the word, including the United States people are bought and sold in prostitution, enslaved in agricultural work in factories. Exploited in domestic servitude.
In my ten-month tenor I've traveled to eastern Asia, India, Middle East, Russia, Europe, three regions of Africa and Mexico twice. I've seen the many faces of the trafficking victims and listened to their stories. It's these faces of modern day slavery that have brought me here to you today and which propel the work of the U.S. government. In 2005 President Bush clearly articulated why we care about this issue—He said “No one is fit to be a master and no one deserves to be a slave.”
Ambassador Mark P Lagon: In the year 2000, the U.S. Congress passed and the President signed the TVPA [Trafficking Victims Protection Act], and it’s currently up for reauthorization. This is the legislation that created my office. The TVPA legally defines severe forms of TIP trafficking in persons as involving force, fraud and coercion.
“Trafficking in persons” and even “human trafficking” is alas jargon terms. Trafficking is not chiefly about moving people across borders. Trafficking involves extreme exploitation and control. It must not be merely mitigated or regulated. It must be abolished.
According to U.S. government estimates, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. And 80% are female, up to half of them are minors. These figures don't include the many millions more trafficked within the national border of countries.
Some may be familiar with the work of my office. It includes producing the annual Trafficking in Persons report released every June, encouraging cooperation through face-to-face diplomacy with other governments, funding and monitoring antihuman trafficking programs--the photo seen here was funded by our office--it also includes engaging in Public Diplomacy and raising awareness.
I also chair the President's interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking that brings together with the different agencies that work on the issues both at home an abroad. Trafficking is a global problem. America is no exception. When I travel abroad, we press for strong laws, prosecutions of trafficking cases and harsh sentences for those who commit this utterly dehumanizing crime. We urge full protection under the law for women, and migrants and marginalized minorities.
As a result of our efforts over the past five years over 100 countries have passed new laws or amended existing laws for the penalties of trafficking. Thousands of criminals are now prosecuted when just five years ago only a handful ended up in jail. And the United States doesn’t just lecture other countries about what they should do. And our commitment to this global problem is more than rhetorical.
In fiscal year 2007 for instance, the United States spent approximately $79 million to fund 180 projects in over 90 countries as part of our commitment to the global abolitionist movement that we are part of.
Ambassador Mark P Lagon: Between FY 2001 and FY 2007 the United States Government spent $528 million for antihuman trafficking programs abroad. My office works very closely with non-government organizations, international organizations and through public/private partnerships to provide needed assistance to victims of trafficking.
The success of our work hinges on close collaboration with the NGO community. Recently my office hosted a gathering of leading NGOs and service providers of trafficking victim assistance to share their promising practices on the victim aftercare for the rehabilitation and the restoration of dignity that must follow the rescue and initial protection of victims. That symposium included leading care providers in the field doing work from Mexico, to India, to Cambodia.
Through this collaboration, consensus was reached on several aspects of services for trafficking victims beyond the immediate moment of rescuing them from the horror of human trafficking. My hope is that the results from this symposium would serve as guidelines and recommendations for NGOs and governments working to provide adequate care for victims. I believe that with the maturity of our movement and the role that my office plays, we need to play a role as a clearinghouse for lessons learned.
We're also working hard to reach out to the private sector, specifically the corporate community on this issue. Last month, my office and corporation with the InterFaith Center on Corporate Responsibilities or ICCR, we hosted a working symposium over at the World Bank on promising practices of public/private partnerships to combat human trafficking. That meeting brought together representatives from the technology sector, the travel/tourism industry, the legal community, and many other sectors. Major corporations included Continental Airlines, Coca Cola, Disney, Microsoft, LEXUS Nexus, Manpower, among others. It was a really unique opportunity for company leaders to inform their counterparts on specific efforts they're making to play their own roles using their core competencies.
Recently I also lead the U.S. delegation to the Vienna Forum to fight human trafficking hosted by the United Nations. And I led workshops to fight forced labor, and demand for commercial sex. At that forum I emphasized the responsibility of companies to make their supply chains accountable and free of forced labor. The Vienna Forum more generally sought to mobilize the philanthropy and business community to address TIP and that’s an important thing. The Secretary of State has provided leadership in our department’s efforts to look outside of government to address the challenges of today. Not all solutions lie with the government we need partners desperately.
My office believes that success in confronting exploitation of abuse and coercion as they are endemic in human trafficking will be found in large part in our ability to work toward the end of expunging human trafficking, with substantial partners and advocates outside of government, like you.
As the antitrafficking movement grows the reach of government resources and the reach of non-government organizations as service providers would be immensely extended by the mobilization of non-government philanthropy. I hope this discussion will be a first step in expanding the scope and magnitude of our combined antitrafficking efforts.
So in conclusion, worldwide whole categories of people are being dismissed as dirty and disposable and are in slavery. No human deserves to be treated less than human. No migrant worker or person trapped in prostitution. The first step is awareness that people have literally been turned into commodities, into slaves. You're here. You're here because you care and I thank you to your charitable giving in the past. I thank you for joining me this morning and I would be delighted to take your questions.
Webchat Moderator: Thanks you Mr. Ambassador, we are going to move in to the question-and-answer portion of the event. Your screens are going to change slightly. We're going to reformat the screen so that the web chat pod is the focal point. So please stand by everyone.
All right. Once again, let me repeat. In order to ask a question, you will place your cursor in to the open space just below this pod. We will read your questions aloud, the ambassador will answer them and move to the next question. The first question comes from Kuba.
Question [Kuba]: What kind of impact have you seen with the funds currently being spent on anti-Trafficking? Can you give us some specific examples?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: When I've traveled to the different corners of the globe, one of the most important things that I've done beyond meeting with officials of other governments to urge their cooperation is to meet with survivors and to see some of the grantees, whether NGOs or national organizations who we have been funding, to see the impact.
When I meet survivors, it's not depressing it's inspiring. Not just because of the courage of the survivor but because of the committed work of NGOs or international organizations. We feel that since we've been in existence for 7 years that it is imperative that we be very serious about evaluating programs to see what works, and that we monitor programs by sending out our staff to regularly meet and see how the kinds of things we're doing are having an impact. It’s one of the reasons we have these aftercare meetings. So that we could share lessons.
Let me give you some examples of things that are working around the world. The United States funds in India, the work of the International Justice Mission, to deal with the problem of debt bondage. The International Justice Mission has played a crucial role of rescuing people of bonded labor, but also empowering them through Indian nationals who work with IJM to represent those bonded laborers in the legal system to get what they already have rights to on the books.
In the near east, we've supported the work of the international Catholic Migration Commission which has worked in concert with Caritas, the Catholic good works international charity to work with migrants in Lebanon who have been subject to human trafficking.
In different places in the world where one sees the horror of child sex tourism--like in Costa Rica and Thailand and Cambodia, the U.S. government has funded World Vision successfully to try and fight that problem.
Finally, we sometimes are supporting just plain research so we understand problems better. For instance, we funded research by Harvard scholars—led by Jay Silverman--to find about the impact of sex trafficking in south Asia. We found a shocking statistic that of those who were sex trafficking victims going from Nepal to India, the incidence of HIV AIDS is immense and it’s especially high for those under 15. We need a baseline of information and we've had success in promoting that as well. So those are some examples.
Question [Katie Wilson]: Do you think that additional funding for post-conflict reconstruction and job training would lessen the numbers of those who are trafficked?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: We often talk about “three Ps” for fighting human trafficking--Prosecuting the exploiters, Protecting the victims, and Prevention. Prevention is essential and very hard. In post conflict situations when people are economically desperate, driven from their homes at times, there is a vulnerability to human trafficking. It does make sense for us to apply resources in those post-conflict situations to limit the effect of human trafficking.
One very good development is that the Office for Post Conflict Reconstruction that has been developed in the State Department with strong bipartisan support from the Congress is incorporating our office into its work. So when there is a postconflict situation and a group of civilian officials go to that country in that context, experts on human trafficking from our office will join the effort to try and fight that problem.
Question [Dr. Joseph Salim]: What have you done regarding sexual exploitation of children being trafficked, especially in Southeast Asia?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: This is a particularly worrying thing. I'm going next month to Geneva to take part in presenting the work that the United States does under the U.N. protocol to fight child sexual exploitation.
There are two ends of this problem. There is working on the ground in particular countries to equip authorities to be able to prosecute those who would prostitute children, but also we try and support shelters so that when children are found, they can be helped. In some ways children are the most traumatized, they might have the sense that they might be damaged for life. In other ways children are more capable of bouncing back…one has to have tailored care through shelters.
I do want to say that there are people who are responsible for exploiting the children, the customer. We are concerned about the demand side of the problem, not just the exploiter putting a child “on sale” as it were. We have beefed up our laws in 2003 to “throw the book” at sex tourists who travel to places like southeast Asia or Central America, Mexico or whatever. I am working very hard to push other countries notably, European countries or other Asian countries to put in place the same kind of extraterritorial laws that we have so that when crimes are committed off the soil of the country where a child sex tourist comes from, they can be punished thoroughly when they come home. That's something we're doing, too.
Question [Lina Nealon]: To end trafficking, we need to cut demand. What is the TIP office doing to curb demand and what organizations do you know of that are fighting demand most successfully?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: That's a great question. It's true of both sex trafficking and labor trafficking, that we have to realize there is a magnet, something that pulls the phenomenon. In labor trafficking, we need to look at those products that are produced by forced labor and see whether consumers think on their feet. If people are going to decided that people are not going to not buy tuna because turn is caught in a way that can harm dolphins, then we need to thinks about whether they should buy products like chocolate, shrimp, or steel that are made by influences that are produced by forced labor.
In the area of sex trafficking it's crucial to look at demand. Let me mention a couple of things. The wonderful NGO the coalition of trafficking women has worked in Europe to look at the ways that legalize prostitution, created an enabling environment toward sex trafficking, when there is a booming sex industry and the demand spikes. Where do you turn for the supply of used women and children? Children to be prostituted or women to be prostituted? Well, from foreign services or from domestic citizens who are minors. The coalition of trafficking women has raised awareness in countries like Bulgaria and Romania that prostitution creates that enabling environment. I want to say one other thing about a great organization at home, run by Norma Hotaling. The organization is called Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE) in San Francisco.
They hold in concert with the San Francisco police, schools, training for those first offender “johns” that has been arrested as clients for commercial sex. What's stunning is the study has just come out of how well that program works, that in fact, when the Johns are confronted with sex trafficking victims and made to realize being customers of prostitution may abet the problem of sex trafficking tangibly, the recidivism rate for those Johns to continues to be clients goes down. Now Sage is working with partners in South Korea and other places to dampen demand as well. We need to do more of that sort of thing.
Question [Kuba]: In the global fight against trafficking, could you highlight areas that need improvement?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: Yeah. I will. I'll mention three. There is a pattern of countries that move up in the rankings of our annual report when they pass comprehensive legislation to fight human trafficking. Registration provides punishing the exploiters, helping the victims and so on. Very often focusing on the legislation is like focusing on a wedding ceremony and not on the hard work of the marriage that follows. Often a country falls down on their ranking a few years later because their limitation falls. That's something we need to work on. The U.N. organization that has the best comparative advantage on this is the U.N. office of drugs and crime. I hope it's recent Vienna form will lead it to work in its great area of advantage to not only help countries fashion laws but implement them, pursuant to the U.N. protocol that countries are party to.
A couple of other things I mentioned. I find it essential to look at the way governments and NGOs work together to fight human trafficking. NGOs often have the greatest flexibility, they’re the most nimble. They are less threatening to human trafficking victims who are afraid to come forward to police and immigration officials because they are afraid they might be treated like criminals, illegal aliens, disposable and dirty people. NGOs are essential partners. What's interesting is not only do dictatorial governments around the world look at NGOs with suspicion or as a source of criticism. But some established democracies in the world that don’t feel comfortable working with NGO’s as partners. That's something we need more of. As I have traveled places like Mexico, India and Japan that's needed tremendously.
Prevention is the hard part. It has to be more than clever posters for public awareness. We must be aware that is we should chiefly engage in a broad development program and say poverty reduction and job opportunities are the single and main answer to preventing people from being so desperate so that they can be fooled by recruiters and exploiters, we must not forget that it takes the evil intent of those recruiters to take the advantage of the desperate, and can never can be only an antipoverty program. We need to attack the criminality, sadism and corruption of officials, police and immigration officials that are catalysts. That's the picture I see implementing laws, cooperative between governments and NGO’s and prevention, but prevention rightly understood.
Question [Dr. Joseph Salim]: There is an organization based in Cambodia, named A.P.E.L, that we have worked with. They use a network of pro bono lawyers to go after the men who sexually exploit the children while in vacation in Southeast Asia, by prosecuting them in their home countries. Do you think this is an effective method of preventing sexual exploitation?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: Well first of all I would hail the effort of pro bono lawyers because they have much they can do to help victims and go after those who are helping victimize them. I'm quite an admirer of the International Justice mission for the work of its lawyers in concert with people who are chiefly from the countries they're working with. Now you're touching on a question where should a predator be prosecuted? In the country where they're committing the crime, where they're using children or back home? What we are urging is that governments around the world institute laws where people would be punished.
Best case scenario is for the source countries of the child sex tourists to make those criminals accountable back in their own countries. Some countries merely have laws to allow them to pursue prosecution, if the country where the crime was committed doesn't follow through with the prosecution. Even stronger is to be able to hit the predators -- listen, who is more deserving of a just and serious punishable than someone who would mistreat a child?
Question [Amarjargal]: How do you work with sending countries, for example we can prosecute recruiters but receivers in destination country very hard to prosecute, would you please give some example in this regards (Lawyer, Program Coordinator of Anti Trafficking Program, Mongolia)
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon:] Delighted to here from you and hear this question. We have to deal with both the place where a migrant comes from who might become a trafficking victim and the place that they're going.
In terms of the sending countries, we need to look at how the governments work to inform people of the dangers of being recruited. I was struck by meeting with some victims of human trafficking in Bucharest Romania, who had been repatriated in places like England, where they had been victimized. The important thing that has to be done is that the recruiter has to be held accountable. I think there's no one more passionate about cleaning up the dirty, slimy, manipulative labor recruitment agencies and the individual recruiters than the substantial labor industries that are trying to do business in the decent way like the Manpower corporation that I really admire for their Corporate Social Responsibility.
People need to be informed about their rights. I've been impressed by talking to the Administer of women affairs in India. Minister Chowdhury has talked about how she is going to be committed that women who are going to move and work in other places like the Persian Gulf. Domestic servants need to know what the situation would be like, and how they could be trapped in a human trafficking situation. We also need to make sure the destination countries take responsibility and they not only should insist in migrant workers knowing rights, but they don't automatically deport people that they find who are in a regular immigration status because they might be human trafficking situation and those destination countries must not assume that the worker is in the wrong in breaking the terms of the work and getting immediately getting deported back to their home country where they might be suffering hardship or retribution from human traffickers. Thanks for a very good question.
Webchat Moderator: We have one more question in the queue at this point. For those of you joining us today, if you have any final questions, please submit them now.
Question [Kuba]: how do you see philanthropic organizations playing a role in the anti-trafficking effort?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: I really welcome this question. I think there may be some organizations that devote themselves in particular to human trafficking. But what I'm really eager to see is those foundations, corporate givers, and others who do broader work, broader work on democracy, human rights, humanitarian relief and development to see where human trafficking could fit in that picture. Let me talk to you just a bit about some discussions I've had. There is a very admirable organization, Geneva Global, that seeks to target philanthropic funding and assist people who are looking where to give their money to a number of projects and development human rights. But it has a dedicated program that relates to human trafficking. I'd love very much to see them do more. I know that Humanity United is a new player in the constellation, who is doing good work in fighting genocide in the sorts of issues we see in Darfur. I know it is interesting in the prevention among the Three P’s and those who work on protection of victims and prosecuting exploiters as well. I just recently was in dialogue with colleagues at the Aga Khan Foundation organization who have done great broad work on building up civil society capacity in countries, from Africa's northern half to South Asia.
If I may, I'd like to return to the question from our colleague in Mongolia. You asked about what we can do of the sending and the destination country. Your working in Mongolia makes me think of the pattern of Mongolian women who end up in Macau, the administrative region of the republic of China. We've been working with the government authorities in Macau to address human trafficking in cooperation. But one thing that would be helpful with Mongolians who migrate and women who get pulled in to sex trafficking in Macau, a presence, a diplomatic presence of Mongolia, would be a good idea in Macaw. I've been very impressed with the consulates and embassies of countries that have lots of citizens as migrant workers and some of those citizens are harmed. Such as the Philippines who run wonderful programs through consulates and embassies to protect it’s citizens, and like some other countries (like Sri Lanka, ECT.) actually run shelters for trafficking victims among their nationals in their countries, such as in the Persian Gulf. That kind of diplomatic presence is important, and NGOs should encourage countries to do that.
Question [Katie Wilson]: One of the most difficult parts of combating trafficking is that there is not always good research; is there any research that you would like to see that is currently not available?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: Yes. I – this is a fantastic question. Philanthropic givers ought to consider not only the most immediate problem which is helping victims that we find and rescuing and rehabilitating them but research so we understand the problem more.
We need to have an idea about whether the extent of human trafficking is what we suspect it is. I think we might get ourselves “wrapped around the Axel” which is to say flummoxed, by only looking at the global picture and global extent to the problem. There are certain ways in which we will always be in the shadows of the global economy with victims afraid to come forward for fear of being treated as criminals or irregular migrants.
We should look at those big picture items, but let's look at focused matters. I mentioned earlier, some very interesting research that my office sponsored the incident of HIV aids among trafficked young girls in Africa and South Asia. More targeted research that would be useful would include the nature of criminal networks. Are they large transnational organized crime networks or smaller ones typically when it comes to human trafficking? I think we need to look at where the largest population of human trafficking victims are—and that is in the sector of bonded labor in India. I think it would be very good for an independent actor, not the United States Government, not the Indian government, to look at that question in order to have a better extent of those who under the law in India, under the 1976 law, should be freed from bonded labor and not be held as a function of caste, who actually have rights to restitution.
I also think that we ought to continue looking at understanding sex trafficking and how it's created by demand. There's a hot debate about prostitution. My own view is that of the U.S. government's policy that legal prostitution creates an enabling environment for sex trafficking. But one thing everyone agrees on--and it's enshrined in domestic law and in international treaties--is that minors who are in prostitution are by nature, trafficking victims. There is no debate about that—they are all victims if they are under 18.
We ought to study how people get in to the commercial sex industry and at what age they do. Because we may begin to scratch our head and realize that if people are pulled in to the sex trafficking industry under the age of 18—whether they crossed a border or not-- they may have entered a world they can't escape. I'm trying to pursue funding some research on that to cool hot debates and look at the heart of the problem. I'd welcome other questions.
Comment [Amarjargal]: yes, Macao it one destination country and now opening consulate. Thank you very much
Question [Lina Nealon]: The TIP office says it works to "nurture a 21st century abolitionist movement." Do you feel like a robust movement exists in the US? On a global level? If not, what more can be done to catalyze such a movement?
Answer [Ambassador Mark P Lagon]: It's a fabulous question. I should say that when I suggest that our office play a role to facilitate a movement for the abolition of modern day slavery, that we would never have come in to being if it weren't a coalition of left and right in civil society, ranging from feminists who tend to find themselves on the left, to Christian activists to human rights activists to labor activists who pursued legislation to make sure that the United States lived up to the best standards of human dignity and to create my office, the funding programs it has and the role I have chairing our interagency committee. So we didn’t create the movement—the movement created us. Now that we're here and been at it for 7 years we do play a nurturing role.
There is clearly a movement—and it is wonderful to see that it has escaped the election year partisanship that one sees at the moment in an election season, a season in which there's a congress controlled by one party and Presidency controlled by another. But one thing I think is missing and is the very reason that I proposed to have this discussion today through the highest assets we have of the information age.
I feel there are great NGOs who work on advocacy that make people understand that modern day slavery really does exist and there are wonderful NGO worldwide that are involved in fighting the problem, in helping victims, in training authorities to recognize the problem. But I think that in terms of private sector funding being mobilized, the corporate community is only beginning to see this as a normal area of charitable giving and Corporate Social Responsibility and I think that giants of the corporate philanthropic world and the not-so-giant funders ought to think about whether in today's world, 200 years after we formally outlawed the transatlantic slave trade, that there's another form of slavery that needs to be ended and see its last day and be introduced to the dust bin of history as well.
Webchat Moderator: Mr. Ambassador. We've come to the point in the program where we have covered all the questions coming in from around the world. At this point do you have any closing remarks for our global audience?
Ambassador Mark P Lagon: I'm actually glad to offer these closing thoughts right after that last question because it was most apt. I'm really eager to talk to any of you individually about what you can do to understand the problem more, to see whether it's really practical, to give funding. I know that you have finite resources and you are thinking about the various things that you may give to, I will always make myself available and our team of 30 in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department are ever ready to have dialogue.
Because Public/private partnerships must include charitable giving. We will not diminish one iota the spending that we are committed to continue with but our reach would be immensely extended if you were to choose some area that you are moved by, whether it is getting police, judges and immigration officials to see that someone is not a criminal but is a victim. Or whether it is to see that shelters are safe and secure, or to help the really great work of organizations like Hegar or the Emancipation Network to ensure that a trafficking victim learns how to make a delicate and beautiful craft that helps them psychologically restore their dignity but actually has the economic means and know how to run a business. Or serious prevention campaigns whether they be the clever advertisements or posters that raise awareness of people or deep efforts to prevent people from becoming human trafficking victims in the first place.
I am very happy to help “connect the dots” so if you find one part of this, one place in the world, one aspect of the problem that you would like to weigh in on, every little bit will count. After giving you some thoughts and ideas, we'll probably step out of the way and let you do what we do best in the United States, which is to mobilize action outside of government.
I want to thank all of you for taking the time to do this, to engage in this dialogue. I stand ready to work with you, even if you are uncertain whether this is something that you want to launch efforts on. But there are many people who are already in the field especially doing good work on the ground so you have many potential partners you could get advice from and go through a discernment process.
To end with a moral point. If women, and migrants, sex trafficking victims, forced laborers are having their dignity taken away from them, if they are not treated like human beings in full--We have it in our power to make a difference. I’ve met people who have been trafficked in Thailand, Mexican citizens who are trafficking victims within their own country, who have been helped by international organizations and NGO partners, but they need support to do that work. Thank you very much for joining with me today.
Webchat Moderator: Thank you Mr. Ambassador. Thank you everyone for joining us. In just a moment, we are going to post the final slide from the earlier presentation. That slide contains the contact information for the trafficking and person's office. Just one moment, please.
Lina Nealon: Many thanks for organizing this event and for all the hard work of the Tip Office - Lina Nealon, Hunt Alternatives Fund
Katie Wilson: Thank you Ambassador
Dr. Joseph Salim: Thank you very much to Mr. Ambassador, and our moderator, and everyone involved, from Dr. Joseph Salim, Virtue Foundation
Question [Amarjargal]: I would like to have copy of the our discussion, is it possible? Thank you
Webchat Moderator: Yes, we will distribute a text copy and there will be video clips.
Question [Lina Nealon]: Should participants choose to, can we share our contact information in any way?
Webchat Moderator: Yes please do.
Amarjargal: Thank you very much
Lina Nealon: Nealon@huntalternatives.org - Hunt Alternatives Fund (www.huntalternatives.org) in Cambridge, MA has started a new program on modern day slavery - still determining what particular area we will tackle. Would love to connect with people to hear their thoughts on where efforts are most needed. Best, Lina
Amarjargal: I am from Mongolia working on human trafficking issue since 2000, currentle international gues at ICTE, my email address is davjayev@yahoo.com or chrd@mongolnet.mnwww.chrd.org.mn, please free to contact,
With Regards D. Amarjargal -Mongolia
Chris Miller: I am Geneva Global's Senior Sector Advisor for Slavery and Human Trafficking and would be quite interested in what other organizations and people are doing, particularly in the philanthropic space. My email address is: cmiller@genevaglobal.com
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
