State Department Archives - Shared Hope International

Written by: Jessica Garber – Intern at Shared Hope International

An overview of the Fifth Annual Intern Roundtable on Trafficking in Persons, hosted by U.S. State Department, to which Shared Hope International sent representation.

TIP-roundtable — The official Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons’ Twitter account: @JTIP_State

Monday, July 22^nd, Senior Advisor to Secretary Kerry and head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons of the U.S. Department of State, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca hosted the Fifth Annual Intern Roundtable on Trafficking in Persons. Representatives from organizations across the Metro area were gathered for the event, some of whom had never learned about the issue of human trafficking until that very day. The unique part of the event is that it was about far more than numbers and more than the tier-rankings that appeared in the 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report—it was purely about the importance of joining the effort to combat worldwide human trafficking.

Ambassador CdeBaca spoke directly to my fellow interns and I, who are working with trafficking awareness groups, saying that many professionals in this area believe that they will one day be working next to us as colleagues. However, Ambassador CdeBaca inspired the audience by declaring that we have already joined the fight as colleagues by dedicating our time and energy to this stringent issue, empowering the future professionals in this area. He proceeded to tell a story of a young woman who was being trafficked and did not speak English, and every day when her trafficker would leave she would sneak the English dictionary and write a few words down on a piece of paper. After a few weeks, those groups of written words formed a note for help, which she tossed over the fence of the residence where she was being held captive. Because of her refusal to give up and determination to communicate this issue to others, help found her note and her life was forever restored.

It is groundbreaking stories such as this one that we don’t hear when we read a statistic that states the number of victims. Special Agent David Rogers, a panelist, remarked that this number of victims is in existence and it is not going away; therefore, we should remove our focus from trying to decipher this total and focus our energy on trying harder to eliminate the issue altogether. He advocated for a victim-centered approach to become the “norm” in our society, and that these women and children are being sold are victims, and if given the chance would give anything to lead a better life. Agent Rogers also discussed how human trafficking is so unique from other crimes because the damage that is imposed upon the victims is psychological—an extreme detriment to mental health, and even brain development in child victims.

Ambassador CdeBaca concluded posing a powerful inquisition: when these victims run toward freedom and walk into their new lives, will we walk with them? That is what we need to make our life mission—speaking for those who cannot.

On June 19, Secretary of State John Kerry released the 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report, an evaluation of 188 countries’ efforts to combat human trafficking. by : Jessica Garber

Written by: Jessica Garber – Intern at Shared Hope International

On Wednesday, June 19^th, Secretary of State John Kerry released the 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report, concluding that there are approximately 27 million people enslaved worldwide. Throughout the past year, world efforts to end human trafficking shed light on 46,000 victims. While the fight to end modern-day slavery is an extensive one, Kerry announced a benchmark success: the number of global convictions of human traffickers has increased by 20 percent since the 2012 report release, displaying progress on a worldwide level.

The Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) assessed 188 countries for this year’s report, and evaluates them based upon “the extent of their governments’ efforts to comply with the ‘minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking’ found in Section 108 of the TVPA” (U.S. Dept. of State Website). The countries can be ranked in three tiers, Tier 1 being the highest. However, just because a country may be ranked in Tier 1 does not mean that they do not have a human trafficking problem, but rather indicates that their government has acknowledged the existence of the problem and made efforts to address it. Thirty countries ‘made the grade’ for Tier 1, including the U.S and the U.K. Ninety-two countries made Tier 2, such as Switzerland, Romania, and Vietnam, meaning that they haven’t quite reached TVPA’s minimum standards. Lastly, 21 countries, including Russia and China, were classified as Tier 3 and are “found by law not to be taking the affirmative steps necessary to fight human trafficking.” The TIP Office also creates “watch lists” which alert the country that they might be making their way downward toward a lower tier. There are 42 countries on the Tier 2 watch list, meaning that they need to be cautious about slipping down to Tier 3.

Aside from the information release, Kerry shed a hopeful light on the issue of human trafficking, an issue that seems now to be taking on more of a presence in the public sphere:

“There is abuse that can take place in even the most improbable places in the most probable ways. And I learned then, looking in the eyes of young women who had been the victims of these crimes, that they were terrified of being victimized again, by the process, by the system. And nobody quite understood what it meant to a victim or the ways you could help victims through the system. Only when we started focusing on victims, not just as potential witnesses but as survivors, human beings entitled to respect and dignity, that’s when we started to provide people with a greater measure of justice. And that’s when we were able to give people a better chance at rebuilding the future.”

–John Kerry, 2013 TIP Report Release, 6/19/13

You can download the report, free of cost, from the State Department’s website: http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2013/index.htm