Trafficking in Persons
Development problems, including poverty, economic deterioration, conflict, and population displacement, conspire to provide a source of poor and vulnerable individuals -- mostly women and children -- upon whom traffickers prey. Annually, between 700,000 and 4 million people are bought and sold as prostitutes, domestic workers, sex slaves, child laborers, and child soldiers.
Pursuant to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, President George W. Bush established the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The State Department established an Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in October 2001. This office prepares the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report required by the legislation. The report includes three-tiered lists of countries that experience significant levels of trafficking. USAID's strategy responds to the law and the U.S. Government's overall approach.
Internationally and domestically, the U.S. Government's approach to combating trafficking in persons is an integrated one, based on prevention, protection and assistance for victims, and prosecution of traffickers. USAID plays an integral part in this effort. The Agency's comparative advantage is due to its field missions and their experience with related activities, including campaigns to combat violence against women, increase income-earning opportunities for the poor and vulnerable, expand girls' education, and promote anticorruption efforts and legislative reform. Successful antitrafficking initiatives are reinforced by programs that support economic development, good governance, education, health, and human rights, and flow from country-based collaborative frameworks that have the committed participation of civil society, government, and law enforcement.
Principles underlying the strategy include
- Emphasis on a targeted set of countries and/or regions
- Antitrafficking activities focused on prevention of trafficking, protection of victims, and reform and implementation of antitrafficking legislation
- A platform of development efforts that support and reinforce direct antitrafficking activities, e.g., girls' education, reduction of violence against women and promotion of their rights, poverty reduction, administration of justice, and refugee assistance
- Partnerships with organizations such as NGOs and faith-based institutions that are fighting trafficking and assisting victims of prostitution, child labor, and other forms of slavery
- Coordination with other parts of the U.S. Government and with local, regional, and international institutions
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In countries where trafficking is a serious problem, new direct antitrafficking activities designed by missions should be integrated into mission and other operating unit strategic plans. Missions should also redirect some current activities to populations or geographic areas that are particularly vulnerable to trafficking, or should modify development activities to directly address trafficking. Modules on trafficking should be introduced into existing training efforts for judges and prosecutors, community workers, youth, and informal and formal educators. Trafficking should be raised in the course of strategy development, assessments, and program planning. Activities with potential as model interventions should be given priority. USAID missions and U.S. embassies should conduct policy dialogue on trafficking with governments in source, transit, and destination countries. Priority will be given to model interventions and to increasing the scale and effectiveness of successful initiatives.
An effective antitrafficking strategy depends upon partnerships. Organizations advocating prostitution as an employment choice or which advocate or support the legalization of prostitution are not appropriate partners for USAID antitrafficking grants or contracts. Where there is government commitment and political will, USAID should work with national, regional, and/or local government agencies. In addition to donor and host country governments and intergovernmental bodies, important implementing partners are civil society, educational and faith-based institutions, and women's organizations. Partnerships between source and destination countries are an important means of linking the supply and demand elements of the trafficking process and helping to establish an international alliance against trafficking.
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