For Immediate Release: December 2, 2016
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking occurs when “force, fraud or coercion” is used to prompt a person to work or perform sexual acts for profit. The inequalities women face in status and opportunity worldwide make women particularly vulnerable to trafficking. While the actual numbers of victims is difficult to garner due to the nature of trafficking, the U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report estimates a minimum of 14,000 victims.
Solutions:
– Promoting and elevating trafficking survivors’ voices.
– Support funding for law enforcement to apprehend and prosecute traffickers.
– Providing survivor-centered, culturally and linguistically specific, and trauma informed approaches to addressing trafficking in persons and supporting adult and minor victims and survivors’ paths to self-sufficiency, autonomy, and healing.
– Support runaway and homeless youth.
– Support the services, protections and legal remedies available to Native victims of trafficking.
– Ensure that procedures to access services, benefits, legal remedies, health care, mental health systems, and victim compensation funds do not violate confidentiality, prohibit access to minors and non-citizen/non-resident adults, and are not predicated on the onerous provision of documents that trafficked victims do not have access to; and protect the safety of all survivors (not only the material witnesses) from retaliation by traffickers in cases being prosecuted.
– Support robust, enforceable action against human trafficking in all trade agreements.
– Establish appropriate programs, services, and safe places for particularly vulnerable populations — children, runaway and homeless youth, LGBTQ youth, indigenous women, and migrant or foreign workers — that address their unique needs.