Combating Human Trafficking
On December 4, 2007, the House passed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a bill to step up U.S. diplomatic efforts to combat the scourge of human trafficking worldwide, H.R. 3887.
This legislation addresses the fundamental right of every human being to live in freedom and safety. It requires a comprehensive analysis of trafficking data to yield new information about where victims are going and how to free them. It also provides help for countries to inspect locations where forced labor occurs, to register vulnerable populations and to provide more protection to foreign workers. It ensures that U.S. assistance programs are both transparent and effective, and it urges the Administration to work with other countries to reach agreements between labor exporters and labor importers so that vulnerable workers have more, rather than less protection. Within the United States, this bill offers additional protections for victims, takes steps to prevent the trafficking of children, and ensures that foreign labor recruiters do not engage in modern-day slavery.
According to the International Labor Organization, traffickers move between 700,000 and 2 million women and children across international boundaries every year, mainly for the purpose of serving the sex trade. In addition, an almost equal number of men, women and children are trafficked each year for the purpose of forced labor in slave-like working conditions. In the United States, forced laborers have turned up most often in agriculture, domestic service, sweatshops and in restaurants and hotels.