Obama and Human Trafficing

Respected voices among us have come to the conclusion that President Obama would desire tier three Malaysia, the hub of human trafficking, be included in the TPP without expecting that would make a difference regarding the protections and enforcement needed to prevent twenty million people from continuing to be held in bondage, in dangerous, demeaning and disgusting forced child labor.

Really?

If the cries of those who are enslaved around the world today were an earthquake, then the tremors would be felt in every single nation on the continent on every continent simultaneously.

For years, we have known that this crime affects every country in the world, including ours. We’re not exempt.

More than 20 million people, a conservative estimate, are victims of human trafficking. And the United States is the first to acknowledge that no government anywhere yet is doing enough. W

e’re trying. Some aren’t trying enough. Others are trying hard. And we all need to try harder and do more.

At our last meeting of our all of government, President Obama has charged us with the responsibility of creating an all-of-government response. So when we sit down on this, every single Cabinet officer who has a responsibility, whether it’s DHS, Department of Justice, they’re all there, all coordinating.

And I, as the chair, instructed this year that none of us should travel anywhere in the world and fail to raise this issue with our interlocutors, no matter what meetings, no matter where we are. This has to be on the agenda

Remarks at the Release of the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report
John Kerry, Secretary of State, Ben Franklin Room, Washington, DC, June 20, 2014

 

HR 181 (1) child human trafficking (as such term is defined in section 203(i) of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 (42 U.S.C. 14044b), as added by this Act) has no place in a civilized society, and that persons who commit crimes relating to child human trafficking should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law;

(2) the United States, as a leader in monitoring and combating human trafficking throughout the world, must hold all nations to the same standards to which we hold our Nation;

(3) those who obtain, solicit, or patronize a victim of trafficking for the purpose of engaging in a commercial sex act with that person, are committing a human trafficking offense under Federal law;

(4) the demand for commercial sex is a primary cause of the human rights violation of human trafficking, and the elimination of that human rights violation requires the elimination of that demand;