Take Action to Protect Trafficking Victims in the U.S.!

We need your help to ensure that shortfalls in the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) are adequately addressed during its reauthorization, which is currently underway. The TVPA has been extremely difficult to use in prosecuting trafficking cases as it puts an unfair burden on trafficking victims to prove “force, fraud and coercion.” As a result, although there are an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 trafficking victims brought into the US, only 111 sex trafficking cases have been prosecuted under the TVPA from 2000 to 2007.

See Equality Now Executive Director Taina Bien-Aimé’s column on the reauthorization of the TVPA, published in the Huffington Post on July 15, 2008.

In December 2007, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a very strong reauthorization bill, the Wilberforce Act (H.R. 3887) that addresses some of the limitations of the TVPA. Unfortunately, the companion bill in the Senate (S. 3061) introduced by Senator Joseph Biden and Senator Sam Brownback is missing some of the key criminal justice provisions that made the House bill so strong. If the federal law that is passed reflects the Senate bill, the impact on criminal prosecutions will continue to be negligible.

Ambassador John Miller (former ambassador on human trafficking for the US State Department) wrote a powerful op-ed in the New York Times (July 11, 2008), criticizing the Justice Department for obstructing progress towards ending sex trafficking and helping its victims including opposing the Wilberforce Act.

The Senate bill (S. 3061) is currently under review by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Please contact Senators Joseph Biden and Sam Brownback (both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee) asking them to amend their Senate bill by including the criminal justice provisions of the House bill (H.R. 3887).

For more details please read a joint letter to Senator Joseph Biden by Equality Now, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), The Feminist Majority, and the National Organization for Women (NOW).

For more information, you can also visit our page on the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

We appreciate your help on this important issue, and please let us know if you get any responses.

Contact information:

Senator Joseph Biden
Phone: (202) 224-5042
Fax: (202) 224-0139
Email: http://biden.senate.gov/services/contact/
Address: 201 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

Senator Samuel Brownback
Phone: (202) 224-6521
Fax: (202) 228-1265
Email: http://brownback.senate.gov/CMEmailMe.cfm
Address: 303 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

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