October 9, 2022
The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) is pleased to announce seven new awards under the Program to End Modern Slavery (PEMS). Starting October 1, 2022, these programs will implement innovative and transformative approaches to combat human trafficking, including a focus on financial inclusion in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; climate and displacement in Bangladesh and Kenya; sex trafficking in Nigeria; and public health in India and South Africa. PEMS’ commitment to strengthening the field of prevalence research will continue through the funding of a program led by the International Labour Organization, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the University of Georgia, to develop operational definitions, methodologies, and uniform guidance for the measurement of trafficking in persons, including forced labor.
2022 Program to End Modern Slavery Award Recipients Include:
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) received $2.3 million to develop an evidence lab rooted in high-quality data collection in Nigeria. This program will support the Nigerian government, and specifically the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), to increase efficacy in anti-trafficking programming within the country.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) received $2 million to develop operational definitions, methodologies, and uniform guidance for the measurement of trafficking in persons based on the definitions in the United Nations Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons and the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and on the definition of forced labor based on the definitions in International Labour Organization Conventions on Forced Labour. This guidance will help facilitate prevalence estimation and allow both researchers and practitioners to better understand the nature of human trafficking with a coordinated set of research tools.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) received $2.3 million to address human trafficking in Kenya that exists due to vulnerabilities and displacement exacerbated by climate change. IOM will employ a variety of livelihood support models in order to build economic resilience in communities facing economic insecurity due to climate change. Additionally, IOM will work to create awareness of human trafficking among specified populations. The program will pilot a range of interventions through a phased approach and refine program activities based on the outcomes of randomized interventions.
Read the full press release from the U.S. State Department.
July 13, 2020
This year marks 20 years since the US first made a historic commitment to ending modern slavery.
“We’ve accomplished so much in the last 20 years,” said John Richmond, US ambassador-at-large of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, during the June 25 release of the 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report.
“Our engagement on this has made a difference. This report and the US have made a positive difference.”
Every year, the US issues an annual report that ranks countries by their progress fighting human trafficking. Countries in the lowest category are restricted from receiving US aid.
The 2020 report lists 22 countries receiving improved rankings for their work on the issue over the past year.
“The department put this out on time without any delays in the midst of a global pandemic and that itself serves to show the priority this administration and the secretary has placed on this issue,” Richmond said, reminding the audience that President Donald Trump had also hosted a summit on human trafficking, and issued an executive order to combat online child exploitation.
But advocates across the globe warn that with the pandemic and economic downturn, there’s an urgent risk that more people will fall prey to human traffickers. They say the report is poorly timed, and counterproductive.
“At this moment, at the 20th anniversary, the State Department wants to tell a story of success and progress,” said Martina Vandenberg, the founder and president of The Human Trafficking Legal Center. “And that’s just not the story that the data tell.”
Especially because right now, she says, the global pandemic is making more people vulnerable to human trafficking.
To read the full story by Rupa Shenoy on The World: Click Here
July 18, 2019
Denver, Colo., Jul 1, 2019 / 03:48 am (CNA).- Human trafficking is “happening closer to us than we think,” and Catholic groups are increasingly committed to fighting it through advocacy, prayer and action, global anti-trafficking leader Sister Gabriella Bottani, S.M.C., has said.
“What we should do, more and more, is to be aware and to try to understand what trafficking is in our reality, in our communities,” Bottani told CNA June 26 during a Denver visit.
“I think that since Pope Francis started to speak against trafficking there is an increasing commitment in the Church at all levels,” she said.
At the highest levels of the Church, the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development is working on anti-trafficking issues and coordinating different agencies, including the anti-trafficking network Talitha Kum.
Bottani, a Comboni Missionary Sister, has been official coordinator of Talitha Kum since 2015. The network is led by religious sisters, with more than 2,000 of them being a part of the network. Talitha Kum has representatives in 77 countries and 43 national networks.
Members of the network have served 10,000 trafficking survivors by accompanying them to shelters and other residential communities, engaging in international collaboration, and aiding survivors’ return home. Bottani first worked in anti-trafficking efforts in Brazil, but she now lives in Italy.
At the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. June 20, Bottani was one of many leaders recognized individually as a Trafficking in Persons Report Hero by U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump.
The U.S. State Department report praised Bottani as “one of the most prominent and influential anti-trafficking advocates within the Catholic diaspora.” It noted her anti-trafficking work in Brazil which aided vulnerable women and children in favelas. She led a national campaign against human trafficking when Brazil hosted the World Cup in 2014.
“Throughout her career, her work has inspired generations of anti-trafficking advocates within the Catholic faith,” the report said.
Bottani traveled across the U.S. with a State Department-hosted delegation of anti-trafficking leaders. She was among several speakers at a June 26 reception on the University of Denver campus hosted by WorldDenver, a World Affairs Council affiliate, and the Women’s Foundation of Colorado.
There, Bottani recounted to CNA the most recent case Talitha Kum managed at the international level: the repatriation of a young woman and mother from the Middle East to her home in Uganda.
In Uganda, this woman had lost her job and was questioning how she could support her young daughter. She received an invitation promising better work in the Middle East.
“Then when she arrived in that country, the situation was very different. There was no job for her, but there was domestic servitude,” Bottani said. “She had to be available more than 20 hours per day. She often had little food to eat.”
To read the full story by Kevin Jones on Catholic News Agency: Click Here
January 14, 2019
The US Senate recently endorsed the nomination of long-standing civil rights prosecutor, John Cotton Richmond, as new Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. This statutory post, created under the Clinton administration, has been critical in shaping the outsize role that the US has occupied in pushing the rest of the world to do something about what is now commonly termed ‘modern slavery’. But the position comes with heavy baggage. As the ambassador takes the helm, he should not underestimate the formidable task ahead of him.
The office of the ambassador was established in 2000 under the same federal lawthat also requires the State Department to produce an annual report documenting and assessing the response of every country (including its own, since 2010) to trafficking. Countries that receive a fail or near-fail grade are liable to a range of political and economic sanctions. While the report is subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, the ambassador is its author and public face.
Not surprisingly, this unilateral appraisal has been a source of great irritation to many countries. But few doubt its contribution to the global transformation that has taken place in our understanding of, and response to, trafficking. Put simply, the leverage created by the report has led to drastic changes in laws, policies and practices in every region of the world.
It has also helped improve our information position. Today it is would be impossible for any country or corporation to deny the epic scale of human exploitation, from abused Asian construction workers in the Gulf to forced labourers on Thai fishing boats and Greek strawberry farms, forced marriage in the UK and forced prostitution in Italy. Estimates on modern slavery are notoriously unreliable. But there can be no doubt that millions of men, women and children are trapped in situations of exploitation from which they cannot escape.
The incoming ambassador faces multiple challenges. Here are the big four.
To read the full article by Anne Gallagher and Luis C. deBaca on World Economic Forum: Click Here
