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OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE GLOBAL FIGHT

AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

Serial No. 111–131

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

DIANE E. WATSON, California 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

MICHAEL E. MCMAHON, New York 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

LYNN WOOLSEY, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

BARBARA LEE, California 

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada 

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

JIM COSTA, California 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

RON PAUL, Texas 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina 

GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Staff Director 

YLEEM POBLETE, Republican Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large, Office to Monitor and 

Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of State .............................. 10

Mr. David Abramowitz, Director of Policy and Government Relations, Humanity United .............................................................................................................. 37

The Honorable Mark P. Lagon, Chair, International Relations and Security 

Concentration, and Visiting Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign 

Service, Georgetown University .......................................................................... 50

Aruna Uprety, M.D., Founder, Rural Health Education Services and Trust, 

Partner, American Himalayan Foundation’s Stop Girl Trafficking Program . 61

Ms. Neha Misra, Senior Specialist, Migration & Human Trafficking, Solidarity Center, AFL–CIO ...................................................................................... 73

Beryl D’souza, M.D., Medical Director and Anti-Human Trafficking Director 

in India, Dalit Freedom Network ....................................................................... 90

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Howard L. Berman, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of California, and Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs: Prepared 

statement .............................................................................................................. 4

The Honorable Luis CdeBaca: Prepared statement .............................................. 13

The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Florida: Statement to the St. Thomas University Human Trafficking Forum, September 13, 2010 .................................................................... 24

Mr. David Abramowitz: Prepared statement ........................................................ 41

The Honorable Mark P. Lagon: Prepared statement ............................................ 54

Aruna Uprety, M.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................. 64

Ms. Neha Misra: Prepared statement .................................................................... 76

Beryl D’souza, M.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................. 92

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 108

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 109

The Honorable Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, a Representative in Congress from 

American Samoa: Prepared statement ............................................................... 110

The Honorable Russ Carnahan, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Missouri: Prepared statement ......................................................................... 113

The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress from the 

Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement .............................................. 114

The Honorable Gene Green, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Texas: Prepared statement ............................................................................. 115

Mr. David Abramowitz: Material submitted for the record ................................. 116

Aruna Uprety, M.D.: Material submitted for the record ...................................... 120

Written responses from witnesses to questions submitted for the record by 

the Honorable Russ Carnahan ............................................................................ 122

Written responses from witnesses to questions submitted for the record by 

the Honorable Barbara Lee, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California .......................................................................................................... 136

(1)

OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE GLOBAL FIGHT 

AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard L. Berman 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Chairman BERMAN. The committee will come to order. 

In a moment, I will recognize myself and the ranking member for 

up to 7 minutes each—the ranking member for this hearing will be 

the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Smith; there is a certain appropriateness to that in this particular hearing—and also Mr. 

Royce for a 3-minute opening statement. Any other members who 

come can have 1-minute opening statements. And, without objection, members may also place written statements in the record. 

Human trafficking, or ‘‘trafficking in persons,’’ is an affront to 

human dignity that links communities across the world in a web 

of money, exploitation, and victimization. 

Trafficking encompasses many types of exploitative activities, including sex trafficking, slavery, forced labor, peonage, debt bondage, involuntary domestic servitude, and making children into soldiers. 

The International Labor Organization estimates that 12.3 million 

children and adults are currently suffering from forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution worldwide. Of that number, approximately 2.4 million are trafficked either internally or across 

national borders. 

Human trafficking is a $32 billion global criminal enterprise, second only to illegal drugs in the profits it generates for its perpetrators, which range from sophisticated criminal syndicates, to independently owned businesses with labor recruiters, to family operations. 

Trafficking is a problem that can be effectively confronted only 

through cross-border cooperation, but it has proven very difficult to 

combat. 

Next month marks the 10th anniversary of enactment of the 

Trafficking Victims Protection Act, authored by our colleague Chris 

Smith. That law provided protection and assistance for victims of 

trafficking, authorized public awareness prevention campaigns and 

strengthened the prosecution and punishment of traffickers. 

2

We have reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act several times and, in the process made the act much more effective in 

protecting the most vulnerable and punishing the guilty. 

One hundred fifteen other nations now have laws on the books 

banning all forms of trafficking, and the number of victims identified and traffickers prosecuted has grown over the years. 

But trafficking remains a persistent problem, and many challenges remain—both at home and abroad—as we look to the next 

decade of anti-trafficking efforts. 

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice and the FBI dismantled the Nation’s largest human trafficking ring and indicted 

six recruiters for bringing 400 Thai laborers to the United States. 

These laborers were lured to the United States with false promises of high-paying jobs. Some of the victims were duped into paying up to $21,000 in recruiting fees. Once in this country, their 

passports were confiscated and they were forced to work under 

slave-like conditions. If the victims complained, they were threatened with deportation. 

They lived without electricity, sanitation, and running water. 

They were cheated out of their wages for back-breaking work picking fruits and vegetables. Because their food rations were insufficient, many had to resort to eating leaves or fishing in rivers. 

This example of forced labor trafficking involved labor brokers 

who convinced their victims that they were not ‘‘free’’ until they 

first paid off their recruitment fee debt. With a high debt, workers 

entered into a debt bondage situation and became vulnerable to exploitation. 

We need to pay particular attention to this form of forced labor 

trafficking and examine the role of labor brokers and how their 

presence increases the chances of exploitation of workers. According to Anti-Slavery International, debt bondage is ‘‘probably the 

least known form of slavery today, and yet it is the most widely 

used method of enslaving people.’’

The State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report 

contains a wealth of information about debt bondage, forced labor, 

and other forms of trafficking worldwide. The report also provides 

a country-by-country analysis and ranking, based on what progress 

countries have made throughout the year in their efforts to prosecute, protect, and prevent trafficking in persons. 

We are honored to welcome Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, 

who oversaw the compilation of this year’s TIP Report. We are particularly interested in hearing from him about the major trends 

and challenges in trafficking, whether sanctions are a useful tool 

in persuading other nations to increase cooperation with the 

United States in anti-trafficking efforts, and the U.S. ranking in 

the report. 

The fight against human trafficking is the modern-day continuation of the fight against slavery. It is the fight to give all people 

the dignity they deserve, and to prevent human beings from being 

reduced to machines for production or pleasure. 

A number of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been 

leaders in the fight against human trafficking and in the months 

ahead we will continue our efforts to make the Trafficking Victims 

Protection Act as effective as possible. 

3

In addition to Ambassador CdeBaca, we have an extraordinary 

and distinguished panel of experts with us today that will address 

some of the key issues associated with human trafficking. 

I should let the audience and others who might be following this 

hearing know that, when we set this hearing, we expected Congress to be in session through next week. When it got into the early 

and middle of September, we expected Congress to be in session 

through Friday. And it turns out Congress recessed for the election 

last night. 

The one thing I can assure people is that Members of Congress 

and members of this committee have a very high interest in this 

subject. Because of the schedule, a number of members aren’t going 

to be at the hearing this morning. We have circulated the testimony and the information was passed around. 

And now I am very pleased to turn to the ranking member for 

this hearing, the ranking member of the Africa and Global Health 

Subcommittee, the author of the original legislation, Chris Smith, 

for any comments he may wish to make. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Berman follows:]

4


61518g-1.eps
5

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and especially 

thank you for convening this very important hearing on human 

trafficking. 

You know, Mr. Chairman, we have come a long way since a September 1999 hearing that I chaired on human trafficking in this 

very room—it was part of a series—almost 11 years to the day 

today. And that particular hearing, then-Assistant Secretary Howard Koh called human trafficking ‘‘a global plague’’ and said that, 

while the Clinton administration supported the objective of the bill 

to combat trafficking, he testified that the existing legislative 

framework was sufficient and that new legislation should not focus 

on developing new institutions or establishing onerous new requirements. Beefed-up reporting in the annual country reports on 

human rights practices, he said, would suffice. 

Secretary Koh further testified that the administration sharply 

objected to singling out and sanctioning countries with poor records 

and government complicity in trafficking, but did agree on the need 

for alien asylum protection and enhanced criminal penalties for 

traffickers. 

That said, we pushed hard and ahead, in a totally bipartisan 

fashion, and crafted comprehensive landmark legislation known as 

the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). 

So many remarkable people did so much—too many to name 

today—to help shape that bill. Top staffers on my committee, Joseph Rees, who was our general counsel, and David Abramowitz, 

who will be speaking momentarily on the second panel on the 

Democrats’ side, were extraordinary in helping to craft that bill. 

And I thank them, because this is an enduring legacy for the most 

vulnerable and the weakest among us. On the Senate side, people 

like Mark Lagon and other staffers also played a vital role. And, 

again, it was totally bipartisan over there, as well. 

As a direct consequence of the TVPA and faithful implementation 

of it since it was enacted, for the past decade the United States has 


61518g-2.eps
6

led the world in combating modern-day slavery. Much has been 

done; much more remains to be done. 

Three Presidential administrations, one Republican and two 

Democrats, have vigorously sought to protect and rescue victims 

from being turned into commodities for sale. Three administrations 

have sought to punish traffickers with rigorous prosecutions and 

jail sentences, both here and promoting that abroad, commensurate 

with these heinous crimes. And in the last 3 years especially, nations have been strongly admonished to be compliant with the law’s 

minimum standards or face significant sanctions. 

Ambassador Mark Lagon did an amazing job at the TIP office 

under the Bush administration, as is Assistant Secretary Luis 

CdeBaca today under President Obama. The United States is, indeed, fortunate to have had and have individuals of their caliber, 

their competence, and their commitment leading the fight against 

trafficking. 

In 2010, the good news is that convictions are significantly up 

worldwide, as is the identification and the response to the victims: 

Shelters providing safe haven—and we are trying in this country 

to expand the shelters that are available, and the beds as well. 

As special rep for trafficking for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I can also attest to the fact that significant progress has been 

made in many member states, including Bosnia, which I visited on 

several occasions. I have been to shelters in Sarajevo. And it was 

the focus of hearings we held, because, unfortunately, many of the 

peacekeepers and the police deployed there under the U.N. auspices were actually complicit in trafficking. 

Today, I would strongly urge Ambassador CdeBaca to undertake 

a comprehensive reassessment of at least two Watch List nations, 

China and India, for failing to meet the minimum standards prescribed in the TVPA and for not taking significant action to comply. 

I would respectfully ask that you undertake a serious analysis of 

the nexus between the PRC’s barbaric one-child-per-couple policy 

and its consequences on sex trafficking. I know Ambassador Mark 

Lagon began to speak about that during his tenure in office, and 

I think the evidence is absolutely compelling and grows worse by 

the day. 

This past Saturday marked the grim 30th anniversary of that 

anti-child, anti-woman policy. I would note parenthetically that 

more babies have been murdered by the one-child-per-couple policy, 

especially baby girls, than all the people slaughtered by Mao Tsetung. 

China’s one-child-per-couple policy has resulted in the worst 

gendercide in history. Today, the missing girls of China, a massive 

crime against young women, means that an increasing number of 

men simply cannot find wives to marry. Some Chinese demographers have stated, by the year 2020, 40 million Chinese men 

won’t be able to find wives, having been killed by sex-selected abortion, creating a colossal market for bride-selling and sex trafficking. 

Earlier this week, we heard in this room, at a Tom Lantos 

Human Rights hearing chaired by Ed Royce, we heard from three 

North Korean women who made it across the border into China, 

thinking they were finding some kind of refuge and some kind of 

hope going there, only to be trafficked. And one of the women told 

7

us that they are called ‘‘pigs’’ by the Chinese men who enslaved 

them. And because one of the particular women was beautiful—she 

is a model—she said, ‘‘They called me the best pig’’—so dehumanizing to that woman and to all women. 

Years ago, I held a hearing, also with North Korean refugees, 

and one of the women told us how she had made it across the border, first following her daughter. She was trafficked. When she and 

her other daughter—because news does not get back to the families; they were looking for her—they, too, were then trafficked. 

So this magnet that has been created by the one-child-per-couple 

policy will only mean, going forward, that there will be more missing girls and a greater push by traffickers to bring women in. 

In India, it is very similar, although it is not a coercive population-control program, but unfortunately women are not treated 

with the same equality to which they are entitled, and sex-selection 

abortion is rampant there. Some years ago, the Human Population 

Fund actually did a study and suggested that, in India, there are 

missing at least 60 million girls due to sex-selection abortions. 

Again, a huge magnet in India, as well. 

And I would hope, Ambassador CdeBaca, that you will take a 

good, hard look at this nexus between this terrible crime of forced 

abortion and sex-selection abortion and human trafficking because 

it is only going to get worse. 

I yield back, and I thank the chairman for convening this hearing. 

Chairman BERMAN. Thank you very much. 

I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California, Mr. Royce, the ranking member of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank 

you for calling this hearing. 

The issue that really strikes us is the explosion of human trafficking that we have seen over the last few years. It is the magnitude of this explosion. And I think the thing we all ask is, why 

isn’t this getting the attention it deserves? Why isn’t more being 

done to leverage against this? I want to thank the chairman for 

holding this hearing to do exactly that. 

I also want to thank Chris Smith for the legislation that he has 

offered up, that he has worked so hard to pass over the years in 

order to try to address this real travesty. 

My hope, coming out of this hearing, is that it will focus attention beyond the NGO community to the wider international community about the fact that something has to be done to address 

and stop these practices. 

And I think the State Department’s report that it released, its 

annual Trafficking in Persons Report, in some ways, is a tool that 

we can use. It catalogs those human-rights abuses around the 

world. It was the first report to include the United States, and we 

are certainly not immune from this crime. 

That is evidenced by the arrest and conviction, for example, of 

a New Jersey woman who smuggled girls from West Africa to the 

U.S., forced them to work every day, 14 hours a day, in her hair 

salons without ever paying them. Thankfully, this trafficker now 

faces 27 years in prison. 

8

There are too many cases like that at home, but that 27-year 

conviction sends a message to other traffickers that, here in the 

United States, we are serious about this and there will be serious 

consequences to trafficking. 

What we want to do is make certain that other nations also send 

that message, that there are serious consequences. In that respect, 

I am going to take a minute to criticize a portion of this TIP Report 

that falls short. 

I was disappointed to see that Cambodia was bumped up a level. 

It is no longer identified among the world’s worst violators of 

human trafficking. In some ways, the administration has released 

the pressure on Cambodia at a time when the situation is really 

out of control. 

Put very bluntly, this is a slap in the face to the thousands of 

victims in Cambodia of this practice, because so many girls there 

continue to be forced into sexual slavery. You just saw the news report from ‘‘Dateline.’’ Many here who are involved in this issue or 

concerned and following this issue saw that report, where they say 

Cambodia continues to be such a magnet for people who prey on 

the young. 

There, children as young as 3 or 4 are sold to sex tourists. My 

own chief of staff traveled to Cambodia to work with some of the 

children just recently released from brothels. The stories that she 

relays to me were absolutely horrifying. 

Sadly, NGOs and eyewitnesses report that Cambodia’s Government continues to hamper trafficking investigations and frequently 

covers up the problem. As a matter of fact, the government goes 

after people who bring up the problem in Cambodia. 

If I could ask for a few more minutes, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BERMAN. I ask unanimous consent to give the gentleman an additional minute. 

Mr. ROYCE. I would really appreciate it if you could, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

The corruption is endemic. Local police and government officials 

are often directly involved in the trafficking. They are pocketing 

profits as a result. We should not be elevating Cambodia on that 

report. 

Today we will also hear from one of our witnesses about trafficking in India, where caste-based discrimination against its Dalits 

results in millions of women and children being victims of human 

trafficking. Of the 3 million sex workers in India, nearly 40 percent 

are children, most are Dalits. The Indian Government has made recent efforts to protect Dalits, but, clearly, much more needs to be 

done to eliminate a very longstanding and entrenched practice. 

No country is immune from the problem of human trafficking. 

Only with increased accountability and honesty can we help some 

of the world’s most marginalized people. 

I would like to thank the chairman once again for holding this 

important hearing. 

Chairman BERMAN. Thank you. 

The time of the gentleman has expired. The gentleman from 

Texas, Mr. Poe, is recognized for 1 minute. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding 

this hearing. 

9

This issue thrives in darkness, and it is going to be, I hope, the 

goal of the United States to shed light on this human-trafficking 

nightmare, not only on the rest of the world but what takes place 

in the United States, as well. 

In my other life, I was a judge in Texas forever and saw the results of some of these issues. And I think, being from Texas, I have 

to keep it simple. There are three people involved in human trafficking, at least: First and foremost is the victim. And the young 

girl that is kidnapped and forced into slavery is not a criminal; she 

is a victim of crime. Then you have the customer who pays for this 

slavery. And then you have the trafficker. You got three entities. 

And, first and foremost, we need to regard the young woman—

generally—as a victim and treat her as such. It is interesting, if we 

have a child brought into the United States that is trafficked here 

and she is rescued by the system, she is treated as a victim. If we 

have a child in Houston, Texas, that is trafficked to Los Angeles, 

that child is treated as a criminal. She is not rescued and put in 

some safe haven; she is put in the criminal justice system. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Mr. POE. I thought I had 3 minutes. You just said a minute? 

Chairman BERMAN. I did just say a minute. You don’t like that? 

Do you want to compromise at 2? 

Mr. POE. I would ask permission——

Chairman BERMAN. For an additional minute? 

Mr. POE. Yes, sir. I will try to sum it up. 

So that is the first issue. We have to treat the person as a victim. 

The second guy, they need to be exposed, and we need to let the 

world know who they are. And if we capture them and they are 

prosecuted, let’s put their photographs on the Internet so everybody knows who these people are. 

And then the last person, the trafficker, they need to be punished 

to the fullest extent. Even one case, I had a Texas Ranger tell me, 

‘‘Judge, when you get one of those in court, just get a rope.’’ I am 

not so sure that that is really the answer, but we need to make 

sure that they are punished and that we also, then, control the visa 

system in this country where a person is an ex-con for child molesting and they leave our country, and the reason they are leaving is 

to go overseas and continue their evil ways, we need to make sure 

that you know, and the State Department, who these people are. 

And so, that is in a piece of legislation that is pending. 

But the United States is the leader in human rights, and we 

need to make sure that we continue to be the leader in human 

rights throughout the world. And we need to protect our young resources, young women here and abroad. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman BERMAN. Thank you. 

The time of the gentleman has expired. 

It is now my pleasure to introduce our first panel, a panel of one. 

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca was appointed by President Obama to 

coordinate U.S. Government activities in the global fight against 

human trafficking. He serves as senior advisor to Secretary Clinton 

and directs the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat 

Trafficking in Persons. 

10

Previously, Ambassador CdeBaca served as counsel to a committee that I am privileged to serve on, the House Judiciary Committee, and as a Federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice, 

leading investigations and prosecution of cases involving money 

laundering, organized crime, alien smuggling, official misconduct, 

hate crimes, and human trafficking. 

Ambassador, it is very good to have you with us. Your entire 

statement will be placed in the record. Feel free to summarize, and 

then we will go through a round of questions. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LUIS CDEBACA, AMBASSADOR–AT–LARGE, OFFICE TO MONITOR AND COMBAT 

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to thank you, Ranking Member Smith, and the other 

members of the committee for convening this critical hearing on 

human trafficking and also for your support on this issue over the 

last decade and before, but, on a personal note, your support and 

leadership when I was a Judiciary Committee staffer working on 

this, intelligence, and other critical issues. 

Almost 150 years have now passed since the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and slavery persists in many forms. In the 

1910s, the focus in Congress and the Justice Department was 

against European women brought here for sex slavery. In the 

1930s, it was called peonage; it was U.S. citizens held in bonded 

labor in agricultural situations. The attention of the 1990s: Again, 

European women and sex trafficking. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 hopefully breaks the pendulum of attention and 

then inattention to this problem that we have so often seen in 

those 150 years. 

No matter the euphemism or the technical term or the technical 

label that we use, we are seeing things now that show how human 

trafficking cuts across these lines. We see victims held in servitude 

in factories, farms, and homes, bought and sold in prostitution and 

captured as child soldiers. 

We have come to understand that men comprise a significant 

number of victims but also see the feminization of modern slavery 

clearly demonstrated, with women making up a majority of those 

trapped in commercial sex as well as in forced-labor situations. 

Traffickers now are changing their method of control: More female recruiters, more subtle means of exploitation, greater psychological abuse. This crime impairs human rights, degrades public 

health, corrupts government officials, and weakens the rule of law. 

Not limited to one gender, faith, or geographic area, the universality of this crime is reflected in the bipartisan consensus 

around this issue. The U.S. Government’s sustained application of 

the ‘‘3–P’’ approach of protection, prevention, and prosecution 

through three administrations now is evidence of this consensus 

and commitment. And so I am glad to not only have succeeded Ambassador Mark Lagon at the Trafficking Office but that we are both 

able to come before you today in the spirit of that shared commitment. 

So what is the Obama administration doing to fight modern slavery? I will certainly refer you to the much more fulsome version of 

11

this testimony that we are putting into the record, but there are 

a few things that I would like to highlight in my oral presentation. 

The annual trafficking report remains the United States’ principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on the issue of 

modern slavery, and we feel that it is the world’s most comprehensive resource on anti-trafficking efforts by governments. It has 

prompted legislation, national action plans, and the implementation of policies and programs. 

We are committed to using the tools of the TVPA. And, indeed, 

Harold Koh, now the legal advisor at the Department of State, has 

in the Obama administration been a very supportive and strong 

voice for application of the minimum-standards rankings and sanctions analysis. What a different 10 years makes from the testimony 

that he was sent to give that Mr. Smith references. 

And so, what have we seen? While there is much to do, there are 

also many things that have changed for the better: A steady increase in sex-trafficking prosecutions and shelters for victims in 

Gulf states; greater efforts to address the forced begging of Koranic 

students in West Africa; passage of a law and formation of a national task force in Swaziland; cross-border cooperation and joint 

law enforcement efforts with Mexico; a significant uptick of victim 

identification in Albania and Montenegro; the naming of the first 

TIP czar on the island of Malta; and greater anti-trafficking collaboration by the Malaysian Government with the U.S. Government and NGOs, which have led to new trafficking investigations 

and prosecutions. 

This litany would be impressive if it were the last decade’s accomplishments. This is the last year. 

Bosnia, as Mr. Smith points out, we feel is a particular success 

story—on Tier 3 for many years, ravaged and plagued by sex traffickers and organized crime. But the government changed course 

and aggressively tackled the crime because of the leadership, not 

just of the United States, the TIP Report, and programs, but also 

the Helsinki Commission, the OSCE, and other structures that the 

U.S. Congress supports. After a decade of hard work, Bosnia is now 

a Tier 1 country and a model for other countries that can make 

that journey. 

We feel, as well, that the inclusion of the United States in this 

year’s TIP Report, a testament to Secretary Clinton’s insistence on 

partnership, provides such a model, as well, as we try to hold ourselves accountable to the same standards that we would expect of 

our foreign counterparts. 

The TVPA recognized that this was not just a foreign policy imperative but also a domestic law enforcement priority, as Mr. Poe 

points out, requiring attention at the local and State level and coordination and expertise across agency lines. And so the Interagency Task Force on Trafficking at the Cabinet level and its working group, which I chair, the Senior Policy Operating Group, were 

created to coordinate those interagency policies, programs, and 

planning issues. 

In the submitted testimony, we have a recitation of many of the 

things that have been done to coordinate, to implement the laws, 

the TVPA and its reauthorizations. And we would certainly call 

people’s attention to that. 

12

One thing that I would like to bring up specifically, though, is 

one of the mandates of the Wilberforce Act, the 2008 reauthorization. Responding to congressional concerns about guest-worker 

abuse, the State Department, with the Departments of Homeland 

Security, Justice, and Labor, consulting with nongovernmental organizations, developed an information pamphlet on the legal rights 

and resources available to aliens who are applying for nonimmigrant visas. The pamphlet is given to visa applicants in the 

consulates overseas, and they hopefully travel with them. It is in 

multiple languages. 

It has resulted in 148 calls to the national hotline this year. And, 

earlier this week, I heard from legal service providers who recounted that seasonal workers who had suffered in silence in previous years with the same employers, not knowing that they had 

rights in the United States, this year when they traveled had that 

pamphlet with them. And a number of calls to the hotline have resulted—workers who had not known of their rights or that there 

was somebody in the United States who would be willing to help 

them. 

That pamphlet was a direct result of the work of the members 

of this committee and the staff of this committee in that authorization and is much appreciated by those of us who are on the front 

lines. 

Going forward, in continuing the work of our predecessors in the 

Bush administration and the Clinton administration, the Office to 

Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons will continue to work 

with our interagency partners, State and local governments, and 

foreign governments to develop comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation to strengthen existing laws and train criminal justice officials to see victims as victims rather than merely illegal immigrants or criminals. We hope that this will lead to increased number of convictions for traffickers and complicit government officials, 

including military personnel and corrupt border officials. 

We hope to strengthen victim protection and assistance by encouraging cooperation between governments and NGOs and enhancing the capacity of civil society to provide comprehensive services that fully address the needs of the victims. And we will wisely 

stretch every appropriation that you give us to do that. 

We will support evidence-based research to evaluate the impact 

of our programs and to fill core data gaps so that we know that 

the money that we are spending on programs is well-spent. And we 

will leverage those resources even more by working with the private sector to have innovative public-private partnerships to solve 

this problem. 

Mindful of those who suffered and died in bondage throughout 

the history of this country, and heeding President Obama’s call in 

January for a recommitment to this ongoing struggle, we will continue to promote a global movement to abolish modern slavery. 

I thank you for your important support of this issue, and I look 

forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador CdeBaca follows:]

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Chairman BERMAN. Thank you very much, Ambassador. 

We will begin the questioning. It is the chair’s intent, because we 

have two panels and have the Pakistani foreign minister coming to 

the committee at 12:30 p.m., to limit the questioning to 5 minutes 

and one round for each panel. 

I will yield myself 5 minutes to start. 

Your testimony does an excellent job of giving us an overview of 

accomplishments in the fight against trafficking in the last 10 

years. I would be interested—you talked a little bit about looking 

forward in your general thoughts about the next decade in terms 

of the fight against trafficking. 

What is that going to look like? What should it look like? What 

are your key priorities? What particular countries do we need to 

put special emphasis on? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I think that the thing that we will hopefully see in the next 10 years and that we are working toward is 

to remove this from being a boutique issue. In many ways, human 

trafficking has been the thing that is, kind of, done after everything else with the law enforcement community. It is, you know, 

working on trainings, working on rule of law. Whether we are 

doing development work or whether we are talking to our foreign 

counterparts, trafficking often is then a separate conversation. 

And I think that one of the things that we are working on that 

is very important to Secretary Clinton as well as to myself is to incorporate the trafficking office into the work of other parts of the 

Department, such as the INL and others, who have such an impact 

when they are doing law enforcement training, when they are getting that kind of mentoring and money out there. 

We have seen this now with the inclusion of trafficking in the 

Merida process with Mexico, standing up and supporting trafficking units with the Mexican Government. I think that that type 

of joint law enforcement is going to be very important. 

And we would like to support not just joint law enforcement 

where perpetrators are arrested both here and in the source country, doing that together, the way that we have done now with Mexico and Cambodia, but, in fact, have that become the international 

norm, especially countries that don’t have extradition treaties with 

us, so that we know that the traffickers are being brought to justice. 

So, on the law enforcement side, that is, I think, our priority, is 

that kind of collaboration and cooperation. 

As far as victim protection, we are working, whether it is 

through international fora or otherwise, to make sure that victim 

protection comes to the forefront rather than being solely an adjunct to law enforcement, but rather that the best interests of the 

victim, the best interests of the child be the way that the governments look at this. 

We think that moving out of a detention-based approach to trafficking-victim care—a cleaner, nicer jail for trafficking victims is 

better than a dirty and bad jail for trafficking victims, but it is the 

position of the United States that there should be no jail for trafficking victims. And I think that that is something that we will see 

continue in the next decade. 

Chairman BERMAN. Thank you. 

20

Just to follow up, is there a thought about what to do with our 

missions abroad, in terms of prioritizing and training and educating them on things they can be doing, in terms of their agendas, 

that raise this issue? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I think the leadership principle certainly 

comes into play. And one of the things that we have seen is that—

and it doesn’t mean that a good report comes from good activity, 

because it is up to the local government. But we have seen that, 

where a chief of mission is very engaged throughout the year, that 

the governments respond. We have seen with Ambassador Harry 

Thomas, for instance, in Manila, the level of engagement that he 

has brought with him as he has gotten his team in place is now 

being reflected back by the Philippine Government, and not just in 

words, but in actions. 

And so, that is something that we are encouraging with the outgoing chiefs of mission. We are working with them at the Foreign 

Service Institute and otherwise, so that they land with a bang. I 

think that we also, then, see training both for the reporting officers 

and for diplomatic security agencies as being critical. 

Chairman BERMAN. My time is about to expire, so I am going to 

yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Ambassador, again, thank you for your leadership and testimony. 

Let me just ask a couple of very quick questions. In my opening, 

I talked about India and China. Could you speak to those issues? 

Our hope is that they are on Tier 3. Vietnam ought to be added, 

as well. And you and I have a whole fact sheet on why Vietnam, 

particularly on labor trafficking, ought to be there. 

You know, last year, Fiji was—Fiji Islands—was Tier 3. When 

you look at the enormity, the scope, the government complicity in 

a place like China, or total indifference in some places, India as 

well—I mean, Mumbai has made some efforts, but it is far from effective—these countries need to be on Tier 3. 

What we do at the penalty phase—and I know there is a great 

deal of pushback within the building and from the missions abroad, 

from our ambassadors very often. ‘‘Don’t complicate state craft by 

injecting a human-rights issue of this caliber and weight.’’ But, you 

know, we need to speak truth to power, not some of the time, but 

all of the time. 

So, please—and the nexus with the one-child-per-couple policy 

and sex-selection abortion, because it is only going to get worse. If 

you could speak to that and whether or not you would do a comprehensive study on that. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Well, as Secretary Clinton has pointed 

out when talking about 21st-century state craft, state craft and diplomacy exists not to sustain itself but to convey our national interests and our national values. And so I think that is why we see 

the human-trafficking issue being something that we are raising at 

the highest levels of government and not shying away from those 

often uncomfortable discussions with our friends and allies. 

I will start with China. I, too, met with some of the North Korean refugees who were in town last week, and it confirmed what 

our reporting and other sources of information that are reflected in 

21

last year’s report had indicated, which is that the vast majority of 

the women in northeastern China from North Korea appear to be 

trafficking victims. They are not recognized by the Chinese Government. To the degree they are, they are either seen as a source of 

low-level corruption, payoffs, or they are deported. 

One of the things that was troubling to me to hear from some 

of the women was that one of the only ways of escape was whether 

or not the clients, the men—South Korean men who use them for 

Web chat, sex chat videos, if they could get one of the clients to 

understand what had happened to them and have that man help 

them out. If the only way to escape from sex trafficking is to depend on the kindness of a customer, then we have a problem there. 

But we also see the reports in other parts of the country—Burmese, Vietnamese, and other women trafficked across the borders 

for prostitution and brides—for the specific reason that you mentioned, as far as the population imbalance in China. And we are 

very worried about that, as well as the massive labor trafficking 

that occurs within the borders. 

We are heartened by the fact that China recently ratified the Palermo Protocol. But we think that, at that point now, they need to 

look at their domestic law to bring it into compliance with Palermo. 

Their definition of trafficking seems to be different than many. 

And you see these numbers about child-selling and false adoptions 

as what they seem to be wanting to work on. I will be going to 

China as a result in the coming month and beginning to have that 

conversation with them directly, because it is something that we 

feel we need to raise with them. 

As far as India is concerned, I have certainly raised this, not only 

with Ambassador Shankar, but also with the foreign minister, as 

has Under Secretary Otero, Secretary Clinton, Bob Blake. Assistant Secretary Blake cares very much about this. I think he saw it 

in his iterations in the embassies in the region, recognizes that the 

south and central Asia region is kind of a hotspot for a lot of this 

activity. 

We are heartened to see that India finally has characterized 

bonded labor as part of their trafficking fight in a communique ́ to 

the field of last September. But bridging the Federal and state gap 

in India will be critical. You can’t devolve power on such an important human-rights issue fully to the State and locals lest you do 

have simply those bright spots that we have identified, whether in 

Andhra Pradesh or in Mumbai. 

So we are working with the Indians to use our experience with 

federalism, use our fight as far as how we manage the interplay 

between local law enforcement and the Federal anti-trafficking, as 

an example of how they can deal with that problem. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask unanimous consent 

to place my statement into the record. 

Chairman BERMAN. Without objection, it will be included. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you for being here, Mr. Ambassador. 

One of the concerns—I mean, there are so many issues with trafficking in persons. One of the ones I am concerned about is forced 

22

labor and government contracts in conflict regions. The State Department’s 2010 TIP Report includes a special section on government procurement of forced labor. It states that, ‘‘Too often, it is 

reported that workers, particularly in combat zones, have been misinformed about their contracts, poorly housed, had their passports 

confiscated, and were required to pay back large recruitment fees.’’

On January 15, 2010, the offices of the Inspector General for the 

DoD, State Department, and USAID each submitted the first of a 

series of congressionally mandated reports that evaluate the incidence of human-trafficking violations among U.S. contractors 

abroad. 

In your opinion, how serious is the problem of intentional or inadvertent government procurement or forced labor through contractors? And is the U.S. Government doing enough to address the 

problem? 

And second is, what has DoD, State Department, and USAID 

done since the issuance of the January 2010 OIG report to address 

reported trafficking among contractors? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I think that is an excellent question, Mr. 

Green. 

The thing that we have started to realize is that government procurement strategies, whether it is for service contracts in many of 

these war zones or whether it is the things we buy, that we end 

up having a footprint that dwarfs that of the private industry that 

we go to to encourage to look at their own supply chains. And so, 

not only have we been responding to the concerns that were initially raised with peacekeepers coming out of Eastern Europe and 

have flowed through that, but also are starting to look at procurement on the Federal acquisition side. 

But as far as the overseas contractor issue, we are working with 

the inspectors general, convening meetings with the IGs from 

State, AID, and Department of Defense. They are going out into 

the regions, doing the samples of what they consider high-risk offices. And, as you know from the report that was submitted in January, some areas of improvement were noted, especially with people not knowing what the rules were, not knowing what constituted 

trafficking and forced labor. 

We have taken one beginning step on that, as far as U.S. employees who are under chief-of-mission authority now, under the Foreign Affairs Manual, have heightened responsibilities for not mistreating their staff, and not only are reminded that they could be 

prosecuted back here in the United States, but also will have administrative punishments if they are caught doing that. We now 

need to take that out to the contractor level. 

And I think that one of the things that is heartening for us in 

the interagency is that the Senior Policy Operating Group has now 

put together a working group on this contracting issue and the acquisitions manual, led by DHS—which also has a large footprint—

DoD, and the EEOC. And their convening started after the last 

meeting of the interagency quarterly working group. We are going 

to be working with the Acquisitions Contractor Training Corps to 

make sure that the training officers get this out there. 

One of the things that the IG found that was shocking to everybody was that a lot of the contracting officers just aren’t even putVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:20 Dec 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\093010\61518 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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ting this into the contracts. It is required. It is required because 

it is the right thing to do, but it is also required because Congress 

mandated it. And, yet, there are too many contracts where this just 

doesn’t even show up. 

Mr. GREEN. I appreciate that effort, because that is something, 

obviously, since we are paying the bill, we ought to be able to deal 

with it. And that is something our government can do directly. 

So thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I would also note, if I may—and this is 

the intersection of policy and art that we often see and hear in this 

area. The big, hot film at the Toronto Film Festival in the last 2 

weeks was about a whistleblower, a woman who had called attention to these exact problems during the Kosovo intervention. I 

think that the more that we see the public look at this as a problem, the more we will be able to drill that out into the agencies. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Royce, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a statement of 

our ranking member, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. 

Chairman BERMAN. Without objection, that statement will be included in the record. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ros-Lehtinen follows:]

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Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

By way of further information, this is a trafficking symposium 

that she and Ambassador CdeBaca held at St. Thomas University 

in Miami, Florida, 2 weeks ago. 

So, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I wanted to ask about the justification of Cambodia’s promotion 

to Tier 2 status. As you go through the TIP Report, the point is 

you have 36 traffickers who were convicted, in comparison to 11 

last year, and that is the argument. 

But you read the report, and the report says that local police and 

government officials extort money or accept bribes from brothel 

owners sometimes on a daily basis in order to allow brothels to continue operating. In terms of the appeal court judge there, the appeal court president, he accepted $30,000 in bribes for the release 

of brothel owners. 

The corruption is absolutely endemic. The point I would make is 

that the conviction of 25 extra traffickers hardly justifies moving 

in the wrong direction when Transparency International now rates 

Cambodia 158 out of 180 in its corruption index. 

The point I am making is that the corruption is so endemic there 

and the Cambodians that we talk to and the NGO groups are so 

traumatized by the fact that things are imploding so quickly in 

terms of the absence of any rule of law and the fact that the police 

are in on the corruption, and these girls at the age of, what, 3, 4 

are being recruited in larger and larger numbers. 

The point they make is that maybe this was a mistake, to tick 

this down the other direction. I would ask you for your observation 

on that. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. It is tough, and I think especially in a 

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One of the things that we look at when we are looking at the 

ranking is what kind of effort the country has made and is making. 

This is one of the minimum standards that is mandated. And we 

had seen a shift in the willingness of the government to work on 

this, an uptick in prosecutions, a use of the anti-trafficking unit in 

a different way, not just simply going out and doing blind sweeps 

of the red-light district and then calling that a trafficking case, but 

instead more long-term investigations, working with some of the 

NGOs, like APLE, A–P–L–E, that does a lot of the child sex tourism investigations and child protection. 

So, too, we have also seen a little bit more law enforcement cooperation with the United States, as far as not simply helping arrest our pedophiles so that we can then bring them back to the 

United States, or the Swiss or the German pedophiles so that they 

can be prosecuted in the home country, but then also stepping up 

and prosecuting the Cambodians who sold those children. That was 

something that Cambodia had always refused to do in the past, 

largely casting this as a problem of westerners coming to abuse 

their children. 

So I think that, for me, that is one of the things that we see that 

is a bright spot, is their recasting and looking at trafficking in a 

new way. 

The proof is in the pudding, though. And I think that, unfortunately, Cambodia is a country where we have seen—and in the report we always have the chart about what a country has done over 

the years. It has gone up and down and up and down. We would 

like to see Cambodia get on a glide path of success, but, given the 

endemic corruption, given the poverty, given the breakdowns in 

rule of law, it is very difficult. 

Mr. ROYCE. We have seen other countries take similar measures 

and they have still been downgraded, unlike Cambodia. Yemen 

would be a case in point. They are taking these measures, but the 

argument is it is so endemic in Yemen that we are not going to adjust that. 

The point I am making is, if they don’t face sanctions, if there 

aren’t consequences, then when you have a police department that 

is in on a racket, when you have appeals court judges that are part 

of the problem, and when you have a political class that is involved 

in this, then the situation is only going to get worse. As ‘‘Dateline’’ 

says, it is now a magnet for pedophiles. It needs to be addressed. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you so 

much for having this hearing on such an important topic. 

I also would ask unanimous consent to enter my statement into 

the record. 

Chairman BERMAN. Without objection, it will be included. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank the chair. 

Let me just say—Mr. Ambassador, thank you for being here. I 

cannot imagine a more heinous crime than the denial of human autonomy. Because to do that is to say a human being is a thing, an 

object. 

31

And in making sure that this is a priority for U.S. foreign policy, 

we need go no further than our own American history. We fought 

a civil war over the issue of human autonomy. Well, there are some 

revisionists that want to pretend it wasn’t about slavery. From first 

to last, it was about human trafficking because there was a whole 

philosophy that said someone of color was a thing, an object. We 

fought a civil war to settle that question. And after that civil war, 

we no longer spoke of ‘‘these United States’’ in the plural; we spoke 

in the singular case, ‘‘the United States is.’’

There can be no more fundamental American value than the assertion of human autonomy. In our own Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that among these inalienable rights 

were life, liberty, and the pursuit of human happiness—strange 

one. 

And, therefore, it seems to me, from the wellsprings of our own 

founding, human trafficking—putting an end to human trafficking, 

insisting with other governments that they move this way up on 

the priority list and making sure our ambassadors and our representatives do the same is fundamental to who we are and to 

American character. So my question to you is candidly, how do you 

think we are doing? I mean, I have traveled widely. Ambassadors 

have full plates. There are lots of competing priorities. I mean, 

there are military, political—I understand. Not everything can be 

a priority because if everything is, nothing is. But I am concerned 

that it is possible that unless we ratchet up the importance of the 

subject, a busy Ambassador may—it may be further down the list 

of priorities but not his or her top five or three. 

I would like your assessment of how well we are doing and what 

kind of mechanism do we have to make sure that the prioritization 

of this issue, as very fundamental to who we are, is impressed on 

new and reassigned Ambassadors? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I will be going this afternoon to an event 

that the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association and the Mount Vernon 

Black Women’s Association will be jointly hosting that draws the 

exact parallel. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. In the 11th District of Virginia. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I try to stay in the area. And I think that 

one of the things that is being talked about at this conference is 

how we have to capture that exact promise, the promise that was 

made to the people who were in chattel slavery, but also the promise that was made to those who were being held in indentured servitude, debt peonage. The first law that Congress passed when it 

came back in 1866 was to extend those protections to the Hispanic 

residents of the former Mexican territories. 

Made it very clear that the promise of the 13th Amendment applied to anyone in the United States, whether it was the newly 

freed African American population or the newest arrival. And that 

is as true today as it was almost 150 years ago. 

I actually think that the 150th anniversary of emancipation gives 

us an opportunity, an opportunity to tell our story to the world. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I have to interject, I have 43 seconds. How are 

we doing? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. How we are doing is that I think we are 

seeing in many ways the antislavery and anti-trafficking fight 

32

through the lens of the TIP Report and the lens of the TIP reporting, rather than necessarily seeing it through the lens of the overarching American value system. And I think that is something that 

we need to work on internally so it is not merely a ‘‘We have got 

to do the TIP Report this year and everything flows from that.’’ 

Rather it is ‘‘Here is this value that our country was born upon.’’

The last 10 years have been a critical time in this fight, but they 

are a critical time because they are modernizing that promise that 

we made so long ago. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. The 

gentleman from Texas is recognized for 5 full minutes. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Four of the worst abusers are Burma, Cuba, Iran and Zimbabwe, 

according to our own government. But yet they still have the ability to receive aid from the United States. We call it humanitarian 

or whatever. But how do we know that that aid is going to the 

right people in those countries? 

The only leverage we have to get people’s attention is the almighty dollar. And if we quit giving them money, maybe they will 

get their country in order and quit promoting human trafficking or 

allowing it to exist. And this has to be an issue that the United 

States leads in. We can’t stick around and wait for the United Nations to do anything, because so many people in the United Nations 

are abusers of this whole process. 

So I don’t think we ought to be giving aid to any country that 

promotes human trafficking, especially when we say they are the 

world’s worst abusers. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I would 

like you to clarify that. 

But first, I have introduced legislation, along with my friend, Jim 

Costa—we are both co-chairs of the Victims’ Rights Caucus—to require people who have gone to our own penitentiaries for sexual assault, primarily of minors, if they travel abroad, they have to register with the State Department, and then the State Department 

has the authority, discretion, not to allow them to travel overseas. 

Now, Ambassador, it is my understanding, and I would like an 

answer to this, that throughout the world, these middle guys, the 

customers, you know, the people that pay for the slavery, 25 percent of them are from the United States and they leave the United 

States to go abroad to seek out young children to have their way 

with them, and that is a blight on our country. 

So what do you think about the issue of making sure that we 

know who these folks are when they come to see you and they 

want to travel abroad, not necessarily to do business but to do 

monkey business? What do you think about that? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. A lot of the equities in that bill—and I 

know there are other similar bills as well—are actually things that 

are in some other parts of the State Department, and I don’t really 

want to speak for them. 

As far as the trafficking office is concerned, I think one of the 

things that we find is critical, and it is one of the things that we 

judge a country on, is what they are doing to reduce the demand 

for child sex tourism in many ways. That can be everything from 

the posters that one would see or training for hoteliers to make 

33

sure that the concierges and the front desk aren’t collusive in 

bringing in these kids. 

But what we see as reducing demand the most effectively is prosecuting these pedophiles, prosecuting the people who would sell a 

child to them. As far as the various restrictions on travel, again, 

I know that there are several different pieces of legislation out 

there. 

One thing, though, that we have noticed as we have tried to look 

at this, especially in demand reduction for commercial sex with 

children, is that oft-repeated 25 percent figure comes into question 

a bit when one looks at the high percentage of Asian clients that 

are abusing children all over Asia. 

Mr. POE. What is your opinion? Is it 25 percent, is it less? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I don’t think we really know the actual 

number, but if you talk to police, again, and to the Cambodian example that Mr. Royce is concerned about, if you talk to the police 

and to activists in Cambodia, the unnoticed plague seems to be 

coming from Japan, Korea, China, et cetera. 

And so I think that we need to make sure that we are focusing 

not simply on the Westerners in these countries, but other sex 

tourists as well, and harness those countries so that they start 

doing what we do, which is prosecute their people back home. We 

have a number of countries that don’t expand extraterritorial jurisdiction over their traveling pedophiles, and I think that that is a 

U.S. practice that we need to export to the rest of the world. 

Mr. POE. Last question. It just seems to me—and correct me if 

it is wrong—I am wrong—that countries are just kind of resistant 

to doing anything about this issue. And that is the sense I have 

based on your testimony and what I have heard from other people 

that, just, you know, that is not really something they want to get 

involved in for whatever reason; is that correct or not? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. It is correct to some degree. I think that 

there are a number of countries that when they start to be, frankly, 

embarrassed in the international community, they don’t want to be 

the country that is behind their neighbors, and they don’t want to 

lose aid. So we have seen, for instance, in The New York Times 

about 3 weeks ago, the President saying it was the U.S. coming to 

them that made them act. 

Mr. POE. Thank you. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. The 

gentlewoman from California. 

Ms. WATSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask permission to submit my statement for the Record. 

Chairman BERMAN. Without objection, so ordered. 

Ms. WATSON. Ambassador, there are differences in the definition 

of trafficking in persons between the U.S. and the international 

community. For example, the U.S. definition omits the removal of 

organs and makes a distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. Can you explain these differences and can you outline the 

implications and how do these differences inhibit the effective coordination between nations? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I will start with the second one and then 

move backwards. 

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. 

34

Ambassador CDEBACA. The U.S. definition, which has severe 

forms of trafficking being the parts of the trafficking fight that is 

based on the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary 

servitude and slavery, is focused upon the involuntary servitude 

nature of what is being done. So whether that person is being held 

in compelled service for sex or for labor, they are considered to be 

a trafficking victim under the 13th Amendment analysis. 

The Vienna negotiations for the U.N. Protocol, the exploitation of 

the prostitution of others, which is the way that the Palermo Protocol deals with the prostitution, the countries that have used that 

verbatim in their laws tell us over and over again that they see exploitation of the prostitution of others the way that we use the 

words ‘‘severe forms of trafficking.’’

So it is not that they are saying that it is having a prostitute, 

it is exploiting the prostitute. So on that issue, even though the 

words are dissimilar, the concept of the person who is being held 

in compelled service ends up being the same. 

Where there is that difference is when it comes to the organ trafficking. The United States has interpreted the organ trafficking 

portion of the Palermo Protocol to criminalize those who would 

traffic a person in order to harvest their organ. Some countries are 

looking at it more expansively and looking at the trafficking in the 

organ itself. 

And so if we had somebody who, you know, cases where somebody was being held in servitude to have parts harvested, that 

would be a slavery situation, that would be a trafficking case. 

We have tried to explain to other countries, when they proffer 

their organ trafficking policy as something that meets our minimum standards from the TVPA or the Palermo Protocol, the difference between that thing, the liver or the kidney, what have you, 

and the person whose freedom is being denied them for the harvesting, that that is at the heart of the distinction that we make. 

It is the difference between slavery and illicit transport of a piece 

of contraband. 

Ms. WATSON. Since you mentioned the purpose of trafficking in 

terms of organs and so on, do the countries see this kind of thing 

as a felony offense? Because certainly harvesting these different organs can certainly affect the health of a human being and can lead 

to a fatality. How do you make the difference? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Unfortunately, one of the things that we 

have seen is there has been more action kind of at the U.N. Conference-going level than there has been at the law enforcement 

level. And I think this is one of the things that, you know, we have 

heard a lot about the trafficking of organs, but we haven’t seen 

much law enforcement activity against it; one big exception being 

the case here in the United States, here in the United States in 

New Jersey, with some folks who are doing some illicit organ trafficking. It is actually one of the few criminal cases that have been 

done out there, and that was a felony charge in that case. 

Ms. WATSON. Since my time is almost up, do the other countries, 

the countries most involved in sex trafficking, organ trafficking, 

and so on, do they make a distinction and do they penalize people 

according to whatever the definitions are? 

35

Ambassador CDEBACA. It is a little up in the air. Many of the 

countries have criminal law that simply tries to mimic the Palermo 

Protocol. Many of them are now changing that to something that 

is more closely related to the U.S. law, because the Palermo Protocol itself doesn’t necessarily work in a courtroom. 

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentlewoman has expired. 

The gentleman from New Jersey, chairman of the African and 

Global Health Subcommittee, Mr. Payne, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. The case that you talk about 

in New Jersey with the trafficking of organs, as you know, is still 

ongoing. It was very shocking, the complexity of the case of immigrants coming over, predetermined that, you know, their organs 

would be sold as a part of their coming into the country. So we 

hope that the prosecution will really convict these people in this 

heinous crime. 

The fact that it is very difficult, according to a 2007 GAO report 

on human trafficking, concluded that U.S. Federal law enforcement 

agencies would benefit from improved interagency cooperation on 

investigations and prosecutions for trafficking crimes, including cooperation between Federal, State, and local enforcement elements. 

And I am sure that in law enforcement in general, this is not a new 

problem. It permeates the system. 

But if, as the 2007 GAO report indicated, the U.S. Government 

is having trouble with law enforcement coordination on human 

trafficking crimes, what can we reasonably expect from other countries which have fewer resources, fewer support and capabilities 

than what the U.S. have in combating? Have we tried to work with 

them, or is it possible to have an interagency cooperation? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. The GAO report was certainly correct. I 

think you are dead-on as far as seeing that as a problem in many 

of our law enforcement areas. One of the things that we have seen 

and that we are trying to mirror in this important civil rights 

crime is the experience that we had during the expansion of the 

hate crime laws in the 1990s where we realized that Federal hate 

crimes enforcement would never be able to capture the scope of 

hate crimes in the United States. 

And so States started passing hate crime statutes, enlisting 

State and local law enforcement, and culturally State and local law 

enforcement were finally ready for that. You started seeing State 

and locals in places where the Feds had to be the only game in 

town, because the local sheriff may have been part of the Klan that 

was being investigated a generation ago. 

We see the same thing happening in the human trafficking field, 

with all but 4 of the 56 States and territories having passed antitrafficking legislation. That training is now getting out into the 

field, and we are starting to see more and more State cases. So we 

are glad that we don’t have all of our eggs in that Federal basket. 

Taking that, then, and looking at the rest of the world, many of 

the countries that we are dealing with don’t have that Federal system. 

There was a bilateral agreement that the Clinton administration 

entered into with Italy back in—and I want to say 1998—where 

36

the folks from the State Department came back from that meeting, 

having agreed with the Italians that certain questions would be 

asked of victims when they were encountered. The Italians, because everybody in their system reports to the Justice Minister and 

the Interior Minister, within a week or two, they had all of that 

information out into the police forces around Italy, more than 300 

cases as a result. 

Our State Department folks came back, came over to the Justice 

Department and said, Okay, now order everybody to do this. And 

there are 17,000 independent police forces around the country that 

do not take orders from the Attorney General, as I think Eric Holder can attest to. 

So it ends up being much more of the cultural shift that we have 

to have here in the United States, through the long-term, hard-core 

police training, policemen and prosecutors who do these cases getting promoted. Hopefully that ends up reflecting society’s wishes 

more than something that comes down from on high. 

So the types of police training, the types of structures, the task 

forces, et cetera, that we have put in place to try to increase that 

coordination, we are now taking and replicating those in other 

countries. And the countries that have stood up their own anti-trafficking units and had that kind of coordination are starting to see 

an impact. 

Mr. PAYNE. Well, I think my time has about expired, so thank 

you very much. 

Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Ambassador, it has been wonderful to have you here. Thank you 

very much for not only your testimony here, but what you are 

doing in your position, and we want to support you. 

We are now pleased to have a second panel and if they could 

come up and take their seats. We do have a slight logistical problem. We really have to adjourn this hearing no later than 12:20 

p.m. or so. 

I will begin the introductions. David Abramowitz is the director 

of policy and government relations at Humanity United where he 

leads outreach efforts to the U.S. Government, multilateral institutions, and international NGOs and provides strategic counsel and 

advice to a broad range of grantees. 

Previously, Mr. Abramowitz served as chief counsel for this committee, where he worked on the Traffic Victims Protection Act, 

among many issues. He also worked at the Office of the Legal Adviser in the State Department. 

And I just have to add, on a personal note, that as we have recessed our session until after the election, we come to a lame-duck 

session and people talk about what is the agenda in the lame duck. 

I have watched Mr. Abramowitz take the William Wilberforce Act, 

the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and 

knock himself out, working with friends and collaborators in the 

other body, to produce a piece of legislation when no one thought 

he had chance of doing it. This is a tribute to his commitment to 

this issue. We are really pleased to have him back here testifying 

on a subject he has demonstrated over and over again he cares 

greatly about. 

37

Ambassador Mark Lagon is chair of the International Relations 

and Security Concentration and visiting professor in the Master of 

Science in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University. He 

is also adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Ambassador Lagon served as director of the Office to Monitor 

and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State 

from 2007 to 2009, as Mr. Smith mentioned earlier. He also served 

as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he was involved in these issues. 

Dr. Aruna Uprety is the founder of the Rural Health Education 

Services Trust in Nepal. In 1995, Dr. Uprety began working with 

the American Himalayan Foundation on the problem of young girls 

in rural Nepal being trafficked to India. In addition to her work 

with the Rural Health Education Services Trust, Dr. Uprety also 

serves as a consultant to the United Nations. 

You came a long way and we are very honored that you could 

be with us today. 

Neha Misra is the senior specialist for migration and human 

trafficking at the Solidarity Center, AFL–CIO, an international 

workers rights NGO, based in Washington, DC. Previously, Ms. 

Misra was the deputy country director and program manager for 

the Solidarity Center’s Countertrafficking in Persons project in Indonesia. Before her assignment in Indonesia, she worked in Bosnia 

and Herzegovina on postwar elections in democracy, and as a senior attorney adviser with the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Dr. Beryl D’souza heads the Health Care Initiative of the Dalit 

Freedom Network and Operation Mercy India Foundation. Concerned with the issue of human trafficking and HIV/AIDS in India, 

Dr. D’souza works with Dalit activists and international medical 

professionals to improve the health and well-being of the Dalit people. 

You also have come a long way. 

So I thank all of our witnesses. Mr. Abramowitz, why don’t you 

begin with testimony? Your entire statements will be included in 

the record, and it would be great if you can summarize them and 

then we will have questioning. 

STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID ABRAMOWITZ, DIRECTOR OF 

POLICY AND GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, HUMANITY UNITED 

Mr. ABRAMOWITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Royce, and 

other distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for holding this very important hearing on the global fight against trafficking. 

My ears were burning with both Mr. Smith and yourself, Mr. 

Chairman, talking about the work that I did. I happen to know 

that Doug Anderson, who is also sitting in the room, was there 

from the beginning on the TVPA, working with Joseph Reese and 

myself, and I think that should be noted. 

At the end of the day, I remember any number of conversations 

that I had with Mr. Smith when he was the lead on some of the 

Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Acts, as well as the 

act itself. 

38

With you, Mr. Chairman, I have to say that despite the hard 

work that we all did at the staff level, at the end of the day I think 

these things wouldn’t have happened without you. I think you 

should be very proud of the work that you have done and the accomplishments that came from it, as Ambassador CdeBaca was discussing. 

It is a privilege for me to return to the committee in my new role 

as director of policy and government relations at Humanity United, 

a philanthropic organization that works to advance human freedom 

by combating modern-day slavery and to build peace and prevent 

conflict. 

Mr. Chairman, as described in my written testimony, and as you 

recognized in your opening statement, trafficking continues to inflict suffering on tens of millions of people around the globe, including here in the United States, and may even have undergone a 

surge during the current global economic downturn, as I think Mr. 

Royce was suggesting in his opening statement. 

Every victim of human trafficking, whether laboring in the fields 

where our food is grown, or in the streets where U.S. youth is sexually exploited, deserve the freedom to be a survivor. 

Mr. Chairman, at Humanity United we believe there are solutions to these heinous abuses but that they require a unity of effort 

between civil society, which can work directly with survivors; the 

private sector, which can ensure supply chains are slave-free; and 

governments which can implement policies to help end this 

scourge. 

In that regard, Mr. Chairman, the Trafficking Victims Protection 

Act of 2000, or TVPA, and its various reauthorization acts, establish a powerful framework for the United States which, as Mr. 

Smith noted, has been implemented vigorously by three administrations under Presidents from both political parties. 

In particular, the Trafficking in Persons, or TIP Report mandated by the TVPA, has been a tremendous tool for catalyzing 

changes. As again Mr. Royce noted, it has been an important element of our diplomacy. 

I ask that a document demonstrating how the TVPA has fostered 

real change, which was compiled by the Alliance to End Slavery 

and Trafficking, or ATEST, be entered into the record. 

Chairman BERMAN. It will be included by unanimous consent. 

Mr. ABRAMOWITZ. Mr. Chairman, as reflected in my written testimony, this year’s TIP Report shows a dynamic analysis of trends 

in human trafficking. Countries continue to be downgraded as well 

as upgraded, and several key countries remain on Tier 3 and therefore subject to sanctions. 

The overall assessment of U.S. performance on the international 

front, however, remains an unfinished story. My written testimony 

raises a number of concerns, including the following. 

First, we need to continue to ensure that the TIP Report focuses 

on trafficking into both sexual and labor exploitation. This year’s 

report continues the longstanding trend toward focusing a bit more 

on trafficking into labor exploitation. Yet I believe the report needs 

to capture more fully, for example, the risk facing women and children who migrate for legitimate labor purposes but end up being 

exploited sexually as well. 

39

During my trip to Nepal last week, activists suggested that as 

many as 90 percent of women and girls who have migrated from 

that country face such dual exploitation. I was encouraged that 

Ambassador CdeBaca alluded to these phenomena in his testimony 

today. 

Second, the administration needs to ensure continued high-level 

support for U.S. diplomacy on trafficking issues. Making a difference in primarily difficult cases laid out in the TIP Report will 

require high-level diplomatic intervention. For example, will 

human trafficking be raised at or around the President’s summit 

with Prime Minister Singh of India later this year? 

Mr. Chairman, I cannot emphasize too much the importance of 

combining the TIP Report with robust diplomacy. Earlier this 

month, as Ambassador CdeBaca alluded to, Senegal successfully 

completed a first-ever prosecution of those who were benefiting 

from child begging, and Senegalese officials specifically stated that 

this prosecution occurred as a result of the TVPA. 

I believe the testimony from all members of this panel suggests 

that U.S. diplomacy needs to move toward encouraging better implementation of local statutes and rule of law in order to make a 

real dent in human trafficking, a view I strongly endorse. 

This committee also has an important role in this effort. Every 

subcommittee should ensure that human trafficking is raised when 

assistant secretaries from regional bureaus of State come to testify 

before them, so that those responsible for day-to-day relations in 

the Department are sensitized to the importance of this issue. 

Third, you should keep an eye on diverging approaches to trafficking within the U.S. Government. One of the reasons that it may 

appear that there is more focus on trafficking into labor exploitation is continuing differences in the executive branch on how to 

approach this issue. And I go into that more in my written testimony. 

Mr. Chairman, this debate is distracting government from its 

real work and should be resolved. 

Fourth, Mr. Chairman, as I laid out in my written testimony, you 

should ensure that the TIP Report is not merged with other human 

rights reports. I am happy to discuss that with you during the 

question-and-answer period. 

Finally, Mr. Chairman, my written testimony has a number of 

additional suggestions regarding how U.S. law could be improved 

in the reauthorization bill the committee will consider next year. 

Let me just highlight one at this point. The U.S. should enhance 

civilian protection in humanitarian crises to prevent trafficking 

when the vulnerable population often increases. I think this really 

goes to the point that Ambassador CdeBaca raised about taking 

trafficking out of being a boutique issue and bringing it into the 

mainstream. 

In particular, Mr. Chairman, I believe the committee should support create an emergency response fund for the TIP Office that can 

be programmed as needed. 

This was demonstrated most heavily this year after the Haiti 

earthquake. Rather than robbing Peter to pay Paul to address such 

urgent needs, an emergency fund should be established to deal 

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40

priations Committee actually took a good first step this year by including language on this matter at the request of Senator Kerry. 

Institutionalizing such a fund in TVPA could be an important contribution to saving lives. 

Mr. Chairman, the voices of the victims and survivors of human 

trafficking are indeed heard all too often from the shadows. We in 

civil society will work with you and this committee to ensure that 

we stay on the path to eradicating modern-day slavery and advancing the cause of human freedom. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and I stand ready to answer your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Abramowitz follows:]

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Chairman BERMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Abramowitz. 

Ambassador Lagon. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MARK P. LAGON, CHAIR, 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SECURITY CONCENTRATION, AND VISITING PROFESSOR, EDMUND A. WALSH 

SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 

Mr. LAGON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Royce and members 

of the committee for inviting me to testify on a very important subject, the slavery of today. I want to note that the committee for 

years has been addressing the highest imperatives of human rights 

that transcend partisan lines, and if it weren’t for members of this 

committee, such as the indefatigable Mr. Smith, there wouldn’t be 

a Trafficking Victims Protections Act or a TIP Office, so thank you. 

On its page 7, the latest TIP Report estimates that there are 1.8 

trafficking victims for every 1,000 people in the world, and that is 

based on very conservative ILO estimate of 12.3 million victims 

globally, less than half of the estimate of scholar Kevin Bales. So, 

think about it. At least 1 out of every 555 people in the world today 

is a human trafficking victim. 

I would like to comment on a couple of patterns today in the 

world, 10 years after the TVPA, the creation of the TIP Office and 

the Palermo Protocol, and then I would like to offer recommendations in four key areas of action. 

The first trend that I want to highlight relates to rule of law. 

The main tangible impact of the TVPA, the TIP Office, U.S. diplomacy, and the Palermo Protocol have been passage of new laws addressing human trafficking in well over half the countries of the 

world. Yet rule of law consists in so much more than law on the 

books, whether in the United States or in the least-developed countries. 

The TIP Report documents 7,992 prosecutions in the whole world 

in 2003, and then down to 5,506 prosecutions in 2009. And of those 


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5,506, only 432 were for labor-related trafficking. Prosecutions are 

limited. They are down from a few years ago and they are minimal 

for nonsexual exploitation. If we are to be plain, lots of effort is not 

apparently moving the needle of change a great deal. We need implementation of rule of law. 

Secondly, I am often asked where are the most significant places 

in the world for the human trafficking problem. One answer is 

India because, of those 27 million people, Kevin Bales estimates, 

who are trafficking victims in the world, some two-thirds are there, 

chiefly in bonded labor. 

China is another answer, due to migrating workers without a 

safety net; a female deficit, as Congressman Smith referred to; a 

wild-west kind of sex trade; official discrimination against Uyghurs 

and Tibetans; and a failure to treat North Koreans fleeing atrocious political and economic conditions as refugees. East Asia is of 

particular concern because it is a focus of both labor and sex-related trafficking. 

And, finally, the Gulf is a major flashpoint because if you are a 

woman or if you are a foreign guest worker, or worst of all, if you 

are both, you are likely to be treated as a lesser human in the Gulf. 

But despite all of these flashpoints and foci of trafficking, there 

are no lesser victims of trafficking. So I see another pattern 10 

years after the TVPA, which contributes to the needle not moving 

as much to abolish slavery. It is the fissuring of efforts, the siloing 

of focus on particular groups. For instance, victims of forced labor 

are no less important than victims of sex trafficking and vice versa. 

Sex trafficking is not the only source of exploitation and violence 

against women. A couple of examples. When I was executive director of the NGO Polaris Project, I met two Chinese women in Japan 

who were victimized for forced labor under a labor training program exempt from Japanese labor law. 

Also with Polaris, I met with an African woman who was a 

human trafficking victim, served as a client by Polaris, here in our 

country, right here in Washington. And she noted she thought it 

was charming how Americans talk so much about cruelty to animals, but some humans like her are treated worse than animals. 

As the TIP Office director who I would say established the parity 

of emphasis on labor slavery, I hope the pendulum isn’t swinging 

toward focus on labor to the exclusion of sex trafficking. On page 

8 of the 2010 TIP Report, it emphasizes that prostitution is not 

trafficking. 

That may be counterproductive. I don’t think prostitution is one 

and the same as slavery, but prostitution is the enabling environment of sex trafficking, whether in brothels or in seedy streets or, 

until recently, on Craigslist in the United States. Sex trafficking is 

the basic enabling environment of men fueling demand by purchasing, chiefly, females, and that problem of sex trafficking and 

the demand shouldn’t lose attention. 

There is another serious area of fissuring. Despite what some at 

the Department of Labor or the ILO or some businesses think, 

crossing borders is not a necessary element of trafficking. Whether 

the family freed from bonded labor that I met in Tamil Nadu, 

India, or the Mexican girl I met who was prostituted as a minor 

52

in Chiapas, those people are every bit as much TIP victims as 

those who cross borders. 

The global fight for dignity for human trafficking victims requires equal value and energy accorded to all of these victims. 

Let me talk briefly about four things I think we need to do. First, 

we need to be an exemplar. When I was the TIP Office director, 

the essential premise was that the United States needed to be an 

exemplar in order to be an effective promoter of the anti-trafficking 

agenda internationally. I very much had in mind the problem of 

U.S. detainee policy undercutting U.S. promotion of freedom and 

credible antiterrorism policy, and that is a continuity between the 

different directors of G/TIP in multiple administrations. 

Under the last administration we put a profile of the United 

States into the TIP Report. We disseminated the Department of 

Justice’s annual report on the U.S. record widely, globally. And we 

got the Department of Justice to produce it in the same month as 

the TIP Report. 

I would really like to commend Secretary Clinton for going farther, for including a profile with a ranking, with a grade, and more 

lengthy recommendations about areas of weakness. 

Let’s think about the problem at home. ECPAT, the NGO, commented recently in reading the profile of the United States in the 

TIP Report that according to U.S. Government statistics from 2008 

and 2009, almost three times as many prostituted children were arrested as offered protection and assistance in the United States. 

We have got to be an exemplar. 

Secondly, persuading other governments to do more benefits from 

offering a helping hand. It is not fully appreciated, but the assistance to NGOs and the most efficacious international organizations 

like the IOM is as an important part of U.S. policy as any. And 

that assistance should go to some governments too, those on Tier 

2 and Tier 2 Watch List that have a will to change but deserve 

help. 

I commend Amabassador CdeBaca for going to Africa on his first 

trip, and it is a good signal because less-developed African nations 

need not so much grading on a curve in the TIP Report as tangible 

assistance. 

Being an exemplar and offering a helping hand are important 

complements to pressuring governments. But make no mistake: 

Pressuring governments we must. The TVPA has manifestly 

worked—in case after case we have seen how the report and the 

rankings have worked. Even among allies unused to prodding from 

the United States, Turkey, Israel, the Philippines, the UAE, even 

Ireland, as we have seen it recently appointing an anti-trafficking 

czar. 

The Wilberforce TVPA reauthorization had a tremendously important and welcome provision in the time limit on Tier 2 Watch 

List status. Please, please conduct——

Chairman BERMAN. Sir, on the time limit. 

Mr. LAGON. Okay, I will wrap up. 

Chairman BERMAN. No, no, just repeat on the time limit. 

Mr. LAGON. Yes. I said that the time limit on Tier 2 Watch List 

countries was probably the most valuable thing that you and your 

colleagues included in the TVPA reauthorization. 

53

I urge you to conduct oversight in how the Department of State 

and the executive branch deal with that time limit because, in fairmindedness, you gave flexibility to the Secretary of State and the 

executive branch to defer or avert an automatic Tier 3 ranking if 

the national interest was involved. Play your vigorous role, as ever, 

in looking at how that is dealt with. 

And here is one other area for tougher love, which I know my 

friend David Abramowitz agrees on. One of the places where trafficking for labor and victimization of women converge is right here 

on U.S. soil: Diplomats mistreating domestic servants. 

I met with a woman from Goa, India, who was a human trafficking victim of a Kuwaiti official stationed here in the United 

States. She said to me, across a table, that the family treated her 

far worse as a domestic servant here in the United States than in 

Kuwait, because they felt even less reason to think that they would 

face consequences in the United States than in a Gulf country. 

That should make us pause in horror. It was worse in our country 

because of the impunity delivered by diplomatic immunity. 

Congress has made crystal clear in the TVPA, three times reauthorized, that attention should be paid to government officials 

found complicit in human trafficking. That is what we are talking 

about here and those cases should be cited specifically in the text 

of the TIP Report. 

One final recommendation. For 10 years, governments, NGOs, 

and international organizations have been dedicating sizeable efforts to fighting trafficking. More definitive efforts, more definitive 

results, more movement of the needle to squeeze trafficking and 

make it less profitable will come about if businesses work together 

to help. 

Let me be totally transparent here. I have been a paid consultant 

for a business engaged in corporate responsibility work in this 

area, LexisNexis Inc. In a week and a half, major businesses, including LexisNexis, from sectors as diverse as information technology, soft drinks, cosmetics, labor placement, energy, the auto industry, the airline industry, travel, entertainment and legal publishing will meet to talk about the feasibility of forming a Business 

Coalition Against Human Trafficking. 

Businesses need to go farther than they have to date—not just 

dialogue with the government and the U.N., not just public awareness campaigns that don’t involve any accountability for their own 

business operations, and not just single-sector accountability efforts, such as in electronics, chocolate or hotels. We can end human 

trafficking if businesses are fully engaged. But if they are not, or 

if they are working in siloed sectors, we can’t have that impact. 

Consumers are empowered by the Department of Labor report 

that indicates those goods tainted by forced and child labor. If 

those consumers knew that some businesses were actually trying 

to fight human trafficking rather than being enablers, those businesses would benefit. 

The TIP Report and the TIP Office have done a lot to take the 

issue of human trafficking out of the shadows. You might want to 

think here at the committee about how that office has done something that the State Department has had terrible trouble with for 

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ing the United States as a partner; engaging publics abroad. That 

is a model for other policies. 

Thank you for holding this hearing, taking this critical issue out 

of the shadows all the more. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lagon follows:]


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Chairman BERMAN. Very good. Dr. Uprety. 

STATEMENT OF ARUNA UPRETY, M.D., FOUNDER, RURAL 

HEALTH EDUCATION SERVICES AND TRUST, PARTNER, 

AMERICAN HIMALAYAN FOUNDATION’S STOP GIRL TRAFFICKING PROGRAM 

Dr. UPRETY. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and other members of the committee for inviting me to testify today here. I really 

feel that I am representing not only the two organizations that I 

am affiliated with—Rural Health and Education Service Trust and 

American Himalayan Foundation—but I am also representing my 

brothers and sisters from Nepal who are trying their best to combat this problem of human trafficking. 

I would like to start with a story why I started this small organization. In 1992, when I was in Mumbai to take part in an international seminar on HIV/AIDS, we went to red-light areas and 

found out that there were more Mumbai working girls who were 

minors. And we talked with them, if they would like to come back 

to Nepal. 

And one of the girls looked to us and said, ‘‘Now it is too late 

for you to ask this question. If you had asked this question when 

we were still in our village, we were not lured by the beautiful 

dreams. And if we had had education, maybe we didn’t come here 

and then we would have been safe without dying.’’

That statement, told to us with a very sad voice, made us feel 

that we had to do something in the villages where girls are treated 

very badly. They are not given the education and all the time they 

have to do household work. Because of gender discrimination, these 

girls are very much [unintelligible] To see, when they are asked to 

come to Bombay or any of the beautiful cities, and that was the 

seed for RHEST to be established. 

And after establishing this organization, which started with 54 

girls, we have now grown up to 7,500 girls, and they are getting 

education in different places, including the government, and at the 

same time we are trying to raise the issue of Gulf trafficking in 

many cases with the girls, with the teachers, with the committees, 

with their parents, and we have found that it has been—really 

worked very well. 

And when you talk about Gulf trafficking, we used to think that 

it is only in India, in some Indian cities. Now we have said that 

it doesn’t mean Gulf trafficking, not only to India, but even in 

other Middle East countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, 

where girls are lured by the beautiful dreams that you are going 

to be house maid, you will have lots of money, you will have a very 

easy job. And once they land there, they find that they are victims 

of sexual abuse, they are not paid, and they have to be repeatedly 

abused by the owners. 

And about only 2 months ago, we had very sad incident where 

15 Nepalese women had committed suicide because they were sexually exploited by their owners, and they were there with the hope 

and dreams that they earn at least $200 a month; but instead of 

that, their dead body came back to Nepal. And it was only because 

they were illiterate. They did not know where they were going, and 

they were very much—very easy to educate by the companies who 

62

took them. That is why we are trying to put so much emphasis on 

education of the girls. And we have found that if the girls can be 

stayed in schools, and if she will know that if she will go somewhere, that this is without knowing what she is going to do, without knowing which place she is going, she can be the victim of sexual abuse, forced labor and be the victim of HIV/AIDS. 

That is why we and many of my friends are trying to raise the 

issue in international labor as well as in the South Asian countries 

and with the strong lobby of our [unintelligible] And the media, 

Nepalese Government has started to bring some good things, and 

one of that is to raise the issue in the national labor. They have 

made Special Rapporteur of Human Trafficking in the Mumbai edition, and they now publish every year what are the problems and 

how it can be handled. 

And we have also started working together with the police force 

in the border area. If they find that there are some women and 

girls who look innocent and who don’t know where they are going, 

to stop them and find out what they are doing, where they are 

going. And if they are not satisfied with the questions and answers, 

they give them back to their parents. And this has really made 

some progress, and we are proud to say that it has really helped 

us in some ways. 

But still we have a long way to go, because when we talk about 

forced labor and sexual trafficking, there is a big Mafia with the 

international organization, as well as lack of political commitment 

from our government, has really made this program in some way 

weak. We totally are trying hard, we are trying our best, but not 

all the time political people and members of Parliament listen to 

us, and they think it is not that big a problem. 

But we think that in the 21st century it is slavery. And if a 

woman, if a girl is victim of sex labor and if she is trafficked, it 

is sinful for our country. It is sinful for our mission, and therefore 

we are trying our best to do that. And we have found that those 

girls who are trafficked, they are mostly—they are from the indigenous group and from the Dalit communities. 

And from the literacy tests, we found that Dalit communities are 

where the girls and women have literacy rates low as 3 percent in 

women. It means that they are very easily lured by the beautiful 

dreams. And that is what we are trying to, with the help of the 

American Himalayan Foundation, to give education to the girls so 

that they will be in the schools and they would learn about the 

problems, they would learn about schools, about their lives. And we 

have found that we have been successful in some cases. Though, 

as they say, a thousand lives, a thousand lives—a long journey has 

to start with a single step. We are trying our best to start this long 

journey. 

And we feel that international organizations and American Government really can do a lot to prevent this. And one of that is to 

make the STOP Girl Trafficking program very effective. It has to 

go through the community and not only in the [unintelligible], but 

in the villages, in the subs where it is for the people, specifically 

for the trafficker, who can go very easily, but for the people, it is 

difficult to go there. Because sometimes we have to walk about 2 

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to 3 days to reach those places, but traffickers are so smart that 

they can go very easily. 

But we have to make sure, we have to make plans and programs 

that we also can reach it and make aware people about this issue 

of 21st century, the problems, the challenges which they have to 

face if they will be lured by those beautiful dreams. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to be here to give testimony 

and I certainly hope that you will help us, the U.S. Government 

and other international organizations, will help us combat this 

problem. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Uprety follows:]

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Chairman BERMAN. Thank you very much. Ms. Misra. 

STATEMENT OF MS. NEHA MISRA, SENIOR SPECIALIST, MIGRATION & HUMAN TRAFFICKING, SOLIDARITY CENTER, 

AFL–CIO 

Ms. MISRA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee for this opportunity to present to you the Solidarity Center’s 

view of human trafficking from a labor perspective. My very proud 

immigrant mother thanks you. 

The Solidarity Center is an international NGO that promotes 

and protects workers’ rights around the world, working in over 60 

countries last year. As a workers’ rights organization, the Solidarity Center has seen firsthand how violations of workers’ rights 

and lack of labor standards and protections for workers make them 

vulnerable to human trafficking. 

Human trafficking is a labor issue because it is often linked to 

the various forms of labor exploitation, and it is one of the worst 

forms of worker abuse. In 2010, a slave is not necessarily a person 

in chains or shackles; slavery is not simply ownership of one person 

over another. 

Modern-day slavery can be much more subtle. Trafficking victims 

toil in factories that produce products that are exported to the 

United States. They harvest vegetables and process food that ends 

up on our dining room tables. They pick crops or mine minerals 

that are raw materials in the products we buy. They make the 

clothes and the shoes that we wear. They clean people’s homes and 

take care of the young, elderly, and the sick. They are enslaved, not 

only through physical restraint, but also through coercion, fear and 

intimidation. In today’s global economy, workers can be enslaved 

by threats of deportation, lack of viable alternatives, and especially 

debt. 

There are many facets that make labor trafficking thrive around 

the world, and I just want to mention a few of these. One of them 

is the particular vulnerability of immigrant or migrant workers to 

human trafficking. Unsafe migration processes and the lack of 

labor or legal protections for immigrant workers make them easy 

targets for traffickers in the form of unscrupulous labor recruiters 

and employers. 

Migrant workers are specifically excluded from the protection of 

labor laws in many countries simply because of their foreign status 

or because of the sector that they work in, including in the United 

States, such as domestic work or agriculture. Traffickers take advantage of this exclusion and the failure to monitor and enforce 

laws in sectors where migrant workers or immigrant workers work, 

and this increases the vulnerability of these workers to human 

trafficking. 

It is not just undocumented immigrant workers that are vulnerable, but we are increasingly seeing in the United States and 

around the world legal immigrant workers being trafficked under 

what are called either temporary or guest worker programs. There 

are inherent structural flaws in temporary guest worker programs 

around the world that increases the vulnerability of foreign or immigrant workers to trafficking, such as being tied to a particular 

74

employer that doesn’t allow you, if the employer is abusing you, to 

leave. If you do try to leave, you face deportation. 

A common theme for both documented and undocumented migrant workers, Mr. Chairman, is what you mentioned in your opening remarks which I would like to highlight, which is the world of 

labor recruiters and debt bondage. Increasingly around the world, 

we are really seeing the use by employers and by workers who are 

seeking to find work outside of their homes, they are using labor 

recruiters; and these labor recruiters are charging thousands of 

dollars to workers for the privilege of laboring for somebody else. 

And it is really these fees and these charges that are being placed 

on workers that is creating the situation of debt bondage. 

The other area that I would like to emphasize where labor trafficking is thriving is within supply chains. It is difficult to quantify 

the exact number of trafficking victims that work in global supply 

chains, but as supply chains reach down to smaller and smaller 

suppliers, the chances increase that trafficking victims are part of 

the labor force. 

The Solidarity Center believes the most effective way to eliminate forced labor, debt bondage, and other forms of slavery in supply chains is by empowering workers to have a voice in their workplace and supporting the right to organize and join unions. 

The existence of codes of conduct in multinational corporation 

policies have failed to curtail trafficking practice in a number of 

sectors, including garment, textile, agriculture, and seafood processing. There is no easy solution to this problem, but we know that 

a key deterrent is the ability of unions and labor rights organizations to shine a light on these practices through on-the-ground investigations. 

We believe that it is important for Congress and the administration to support such monitoring efforts and the efforts of workers 

to monitor their own workplaces. In order to get rid of trafficking 

in supply chains, we have to focus on corporate accountability and 

not just corporate social responsibility. 

Governments also must play a major role in eliminating slavery 

in supply chains. There are examples around the world of governments’ reluctance to hold employers accountable for trafficking in 

the workplace. When they do address trafficking for labor exploitation in the supply chain, they often blame the labor recruiter and 

don’t hold the end-user, the employer who is exploiting the worker, 

liable for that trafficking. When cases are prosecuted, they also result in just small fines and no jail time for the perpetrators, which 

is barely a deterrent for exploitative employers. 

I would also like to emphasize the importance of the Trafficking 

in Persons Report in highlighting labor trafficking. I have dealt 

with a lot of governments around the world who have complained 

to me about the Trafficking in Persons Report, but I have to tell 

you that it has been extremely important in Solidarity Center’s 

work in being able to leverage and push governments to address 

issues of labor trafficking. Without this report, without being able 

to point to it and having cases of, such as in the Gulf, where legal 

migrant workers are trafficked for forced labor, it would be very 

difficult for us to get these governments to move. 

75

So just in closing, in the interest of time, I would just like to 

highlight a few key initiatives that I think we need to focus on to 

address labor trafficking. These include reforming labor and other 

laws to include and protect immigrants and domestic workers. 

Also, we have to pay equal attention to not just passing better 

laws but also implementing, monitoring, and enforcing these laws. 

This includes a greater role for labor inspectors. Labor inspectors 

must be engaged in and be an integral part of law enforcement initiatives to combat human trafficking. I have been to countries 

where literally there have been 5 to 10 labor inspectors for an entire country to monitor the situation for migrant workers, and that 

is just not going to help us solve this problem. 

In addition, labor inspectors have to be given special training to 

know how, when they go into workplaces, what are the questions 

they need to ask that go beyond just the initial questions to find 

trafficking in the workplace. 

We need to ensure that victims of labor trafficking not only participate in criminal prosecutions, but are also given access to civil 

suits where they can get withheld or back wages. 

As I said earlier, we have to ensure that employers are held accountable for their role in labor trafficking and that they are held 

accountable not just for what they do but also for what the labor 

recruiters that they hire and the subcontractors that they hire, the 

abuses that they commit in their supply chains. 

We have to place greater emphasis on safer migration processes 

for workers. And we have to have increased scrutiny of imports and 

exports to ensure that goods made from slave labor are not allowed 

into the marketplace. This also includes reviewing and reworking 

the role of ICE in overseas inspections. 

We have to have strict regulation of labor recruiters in employment agencies, and we must have a strict policy of no fees being 

charged to workers, period. 

We have to extend meaningful whistleblower protections to trafficked workers which allow workers and their representatives to 

sue to enforce all State, Federal, local, and employment laws, as 

well as the conditions in workers’ contracts, without having to face 

deportation or removal. 

And, finally, we need to put increased pressure and monitoring 

on States to include trafficking for labor exploitation into anti-trafficking laws and regulations and to increase prosecutions of labor 

traffickers, including employers, as the perpetrators of human trafficking. 

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Misra follows:]

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Chairman BERMAN. Well, thank you very much. You talked 

about a lot of issues that I have been interested in for a long time. 

Dr. D’souza? 

STATEMENT OF BERYL D’SOUZA, M.D., MEDICAL DIRECTOR 

AND ANTI–HUMAN TRAFFICKING DIRECTOR IN INDIA, DALIT 

FREEDOM NETWORK 

Dr. D’SOUZA. Thank you, Congressman Berman, for organizing 

this most significant hearing and inviting me to appear today with 

this prestigious panel. 

I would like to speak about India’s progress in combating human 

trafficking, the challenges looming ahead, and four approaches to 

the crisis that are seeing success. 

Of the 28 million people around the world that the U.N. considers human slaves, the U.N. recognizes that most live in India 

and most are Dalits. Today, Dalits are the largest number of people 

categorized as modern-day slaves. So we really cannot have a discussion about human trafficking and not look at India and regard 

the problem of the Dalits. 

Because of their poverty and the resulting desperation and lack 

of options, trafficking is not simply a problem the Dalits face, it is 

an atrocity that has swept Dalit culture in all parts of the nation. 

Debt bondage is the Dalit destiny most feared. It is inherent in 

every Dalit religion and the life of every Dalit person. Their lack 

of access to education, health care, and a living wage leaves most 

Dalits resigned to a hopelessness that, without an intervention, 

will not change. 

The 2010 TIP Report placed India on the Tier 2 Watch List for 

the 7th year and defined it as a nation in which the number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing. 

I am the daughter of a Dalit woman. I have dedicated my life to 

joining others in my country to end Dalit trafficking. 

Despite the bleakness of the situation, especially for India’s 250 

million Dalits, India is making progress in combating human trafficking. First, and most notably, the country’s top leaders have spoken into the public record that human trafficking is India’s number-one social problem, with estimates of 100 million people involved——

Chairman BERMAN. Who has said that? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. This has been——

Chairman BERMAN. The government you say? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. Yes, our home minister. 

Chairman BERMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. D’SOUZA [continuing]. A crisis that should be dealt with by 

all stakeholders with a stern and iron hand. 

Second, there are committed individuals using their position to 

end this crisis. The 2010 TIP Report recognized Mr. Sattaru 

Umapathi as one of the nine global heroes. An anti-human-trafficking officer, he led rescue operations, contributed to multiple 

convictions, forged partnerships with NGOs, and educated his state 

law enforcement community about victim rights. He is a true 

champion for victims everywhere. 

91

Third, dedicated NGOs are combating trafficking through rescue 

and restore, as well as preventive and preemptive programs. The 

NGO with which I am affiliated, the Dalit Freedom Network, and 

all its India partners are driving into the problems from both onramps and seeing results. 

But there are still major challenges looming ahead for India. As 

we anticipate the publication of the 2011 TIP Report, we recognize 

that India is at serious risk for demotion to Tier 3 if significant efforts at improvement are not initiated and registered in the next 

6 months. 

Only 7 percent of India’s police personnel have received anti-trafficking training. The government’s anti-human-trafficking units 

lack sufficient personnel and funding. The existing laws, while substantive, do not focus on the rights and needs of victims. There are 

a low number of prosecutions and convictions of known traffickers. 

Due to lack of time, I will conclude with four approaches that are 

gaining traction and can serve as a template for other nations. 

First, we are seeing that the end of trafficking begins with education. Education changes a nation. The education of India’s most 

vulnerable children becomes the most significant means of preventing the selling and exploitation of these children into the workforce and the sex trade. 

We educate Dalit children so they are worth more than the meager income they can make in the factories employing them. To 

date, there are 100 of these schools and nearly 25,000 children enrolled. Approximately 30 percent of the children are children of 

bonded laborers. They are studying hard, learning English, and 

preparing for a higher education and a future that does not know 

desperate poverty. 

Education is a preemptive strike in any nation in which its most 

vulnerable children are at risk of being trafficked. 

Second, the end of trafficking draws near when we economically 

empower marginalized populations. No longer are prostitution and 

debt bondage the only options for the poor. Dalits are being trained 

in marketable skills, finance management, and being offered micro 

loans to establish their own businesses and earn enough income so 

that they do not fall prey to fraudulent money lenders that demand 

exorbitant interest so that even a small loan can never be repaid. 

We cannot underestimate the horrors that follow when poor parents are forced to sell their own children in an attempt to pay down 

their debts. 

Third, human trafficking is deterred when societies pursue 

health care for all its citizens. Preventative health care, health hygiene, HIV and AIDS education, and safe labor practices all promote healthy communities and produce healthy economic factors. 

Most Dalits are forced into debt bondage because of a medical crisis 

that could have been avoided through proper health care. 

Finally, we find that advocacy efforts in India and abroad are 

yielding positive results and should continue to be specific and targeted, beginning with internal advocacy before the Indian Government and extending to our international allies who seek to stand 

with us before their own government in our united efforts to end 

Dalit trafficking. 

Thank you, again, Congressman Berman and this committee. 

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[The prepared statement of Dr. D’souza follows:]


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Chairman BERMAN. Well, thank you all very much. It was fascinating and important. 

I am going to yield 5 minutes to my colleague, Mr. Royce, to 

begin the questioning. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. 

And I will ask Dr. D’souza a question. 

In your written testimony, you mentioned Prime Minister Singh’s 

statement. His statement was, ‘‘Even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and support, there is still social discrimination against Dalits in many parts of our country. Dalits 

have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general.’’ 

That was his quote. 

How important was his statement, and how has it affected the 

treatment of Dalits as a consequence of that statement? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. Yes, I think Prime Minister Singh deserves an accolade for his bold statement and being bold enough to address the 

issue of human trafficking and the relationship to the Dalit atrocities and the Dalit situation in India. 

I think the entire issue of Dalits has been a political issue in the 

Indian Government ever since we have had our independence. And 

by boldly declaring that as an issue, it has led to more preemptive 

measures, both from within the government as well as with the 

nongovernmental organizations, to deal with this significant problem. 

Mr. ROYCE. Do you think it has changed in any significant way 

the perception and maybe led to a situation where Dalits are less 

susceptible to human trafficking? Do you think it has an impact 

among Dalits and amongst society in general that has assisted? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. Absolutely. I think Prime Minister Singh addressing and accepting the issue of Dalits from the Indian Government 

stance has been seen very welcomed by the Dalit community. The 

fact that they are being quantified, the fact that they are being addressed and their rights are being discussed has been very significant. 

Mr. ROYCE. The TIP Report recognizes certain heroes. One that 

they elevate you mentioned, Sattaru—do I say ‘‘Umapathi’’? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. That is right. 

Mr. ROYCE. Okay. He is the anti-human-trafficking officer in Andhra Pradesh. His work, of course, has led to multiple convictions 

of human traffickers. A lot of NGOs now across India have formed 

a partnership as a result of his activity and in Tamil Nadu, as well. 

Aside from highlighting his good work, how can we export some 

of the lessons? How do we expand on what is being done in those 

states and get other states involved? What are some of the ideas 

that might suffice to build the momentum on this? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. Well, again, I would like to appreciate what has 

been discussed by Ambassador CdeBaca in the initial part about 

how trafficking should not be seen as a boutique issue but more a 

basic primary human-rights issue. And how, by accolading 

Umapathi, we are actually encouraging various law enforcement 

agencies within our country, different states across the country, to 

look at it as the significant issue it is and to encourage behavior, 

103

to exchange information, to exchange resources, to exchange best 

practices. That is the way to go ahead. 

Mr. ROYCE. We find that some of the answers here in the United 

States, too, are training of law enforcement. What was the percentage you gave on training today in trafficking? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. It is about 7 percent of our police personnel. 

Mr. ROYCE. Yes. 

Dr. D’SOUZA. It is only 7 percent of our police personnel that 

have had adequate training in regard to dealing with victims of 

human trafficking. 

Mr. ROYCE. Your point is, if that became a focus, along with the 

education of young women and young people and their equal opportunity through education, that that, more than anything else, 

would——

Dr. D’SOUZA. That is right. 

Mr. ROYCE. What are some of the ways that we might be able 

to promote the advocacy for education for everybody in society, including Dalits? 

Dr. D’SOUZA. Again, access. Advocating for education and making 

sure it is accessible to everybody. In our country or in other different countries where you have so many social injustices all connected and so intertwined that it seems impossible to actually do 

any progress, you have to work together in a concerted manner to 

ensure equal opportunity, whether it is access to education, whether it is access to universal health care. Because these are the really 

critical roots that will actually ensure development happening. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you very much, Dr. D’souza. 

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BERMAN. Well, thank you. 

And I yield myself time. We are approaching this moment where 

I have to leave. I would love to stay. The great thing about being 

the last person to question and the chairman is that if I had the 

time, there are threads here that I would like to pursue for the 

next half hour with you, and I am not going to be able to. 

But there was an interesting connection between much of the 

testimony that all of you gave in a certain way, even though different things were focused on. So, Ambassador Lagon talks about 

the focus on the prosecution side of it and raises the implication 

of, are we doing enough in the area of both protection and prevention? 

And then Dr. Uprety describes a very specific situation of young 

Nepalese women and girls lured by their dreams, and there is 

nothing in their education at home or in school that points out the 

dangers of what could befall you, and how many people could avoid 

being victims of human trafficking by just focusing on that aspect 

of making people aware of the pitfalls of doing some of the things 

that they are enticed to do at a point where they still are not in 

harm’s way. 

And then Dr. D’souza adds the notion that maybe you also need 

a component of other alternatives, not just the warnings of what 

could befall you, but the notion that there are other opportunities, 

other avenues. 

And then Ms. Misra spoke. I have been very interested in the 

issues of migrant labor and how to deal with the exploitation that 

104

comes from it. But the point that all of you, and particularly Ms. 

Misra, have driven home is that exploitation turns into a slavery, 

trafficking kind of—is a fairly thin line between getting shorted on 

your paycheck and in the end being held, in a sense, in bondage. 

And we have talked about, how do you get through some of this? 

If you are going to have guest-worker programs to deal with labor 

shortages in certain areas, like farming, to what extent could Mexico, as a government, be the source of selection, protection of the 

workers who would be coming over, rather than private recruiters 

working on behalf of grower interests here, but charging the person 

more than, in effect, the grower for bringing them in. If you could 

turn it into a bit of a government-to-government thing, you could 

avoid many of those issues. 

And the notion that you are stuck in that situation with one employer and that your alternatives are staying there under what 

could be horrid conditions or going back to your home country, 

rather than that person knowing that he could lose the worker to 

another grower or employer who isn’t engaging in those kinds of 

practices could be a great deterrent. 

So these are very interesting things. 

I want to ask Mr. Abramowitz one question, though. You talked 

in your testimony about urging us to focus on the importance of the 

administration’s implementation of the new features of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 relating to 

moving countries from Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 3, where the sanction would apply, and the question of Presidential waivers. 

Spell that out a little bit. What should we be concerned about 

here? 

Mr. ABRAMOWITZ. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think this came up in 

several of the other testimonies, including Ambassador Lagon as 

well as Dr. D’souza. As was referenced, the TVPRA of 2008 amended the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 so that, rather 

than countries being able to stay on the Tier 2 Watch List forever—which has been the situation with a number of countries, including India, China, and Russia—after 2 years, they are going to 

have to go down to Tier 3 if they haven’t been able to move up. 

I think that this is going to cause a lot of hydraulic pressure on 

the Trafficking in Persons Office to try to find ways, for example, 

as Mr. Royce suggests might have happened to Cambodia, to move 

them up from the Tier 2 Watch List up to Tier 2 so that they can 

avoid that, because this is the second year for a number of those 

countries. 

The alternative to that, though, is, if it is determined that there 

is no real progress being made, let’s say within India because it 

goes from 7 percent to 7.1 percent of the number of police officers 

trained, then those countries are going to fall down to Tier 3 and, 

therefore, be subject to sanctions. 

I would rather have an honest assessment, have the countries 

fall down, and then the President make a determination as to 

whether assistance needs to be cut off or not. However, I do think 

that there is some risk that, if a number of countries do go down 

to Tier 3 and there is a wide range of waivers that the President 

then implements—because, in India, we need to continue cooperation, or Russia, we need to continue democracy assistance, whatVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:20 Dec 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00108 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\093010\61518 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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ever the national interest is—then I think there is a possibility 

that the officials in foreign countries will say, Oh, this is not a big 

problem because the President will just waive for us. 

I do think that the name and shame issue remains something 

that is a very, very powerful motivator. It is not just because of the 

threat of sanctions, but Ambassador CdeBaca said today that the 

threat of sanctions is a component of that. 

So my own view is that we need to try to see if the administration will not only continue on its assessment but also will look at 

maybe, perhaps, targeted waivers of assistance that really go to 

pushing forward rather than just wholesale waivers in the national 

interest. 

Chairman BERMAN. My time has more than expired. I didn’t realize the gentlelady was here. Could I invite the gentlelady to take 

over the questioning and the chair? Because I have to go someplace 

where you may be joining me very soon. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, in light of that, can I just take 

3 minutes or so and not hold you? 

Chairman BERMAN. All right. The gentlelady is recognized for 3 

minutes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Okay. I did not want to miss this hearing, Mr. 

Chairman, because I think the issues before us are so very vital. 

And I had an overlapping immigration hearing that, likewise, is 

facing a number of concerns. 

So let me say that human trafficking is the most dastardly attack on human dignity and the values that one holds for the respect we have for humanity. We cannot describe it any way other 

than that it cuts off and extinguishes the life of someone without 

killing them, and particularly women who are vulnerable and with 

great—women and children, in particular. 

We were holding a hearing in the Judiciary Committee on 

human trafficking in the United States. So none of us are immune 

from this. And I want to thank the chairman for this hearing. Coming out of the shadows is very important. 

Let me ask two questions. And I am just selectively—David, because we have worked together—to highlight the vileness of it. But 

what should our first aim be if we want to take the high goal of 

extinguishing human trafficking around the world? 

And then, if I could ask Aruna, if you would, likewise, tell us the 

lowest ebb that victims fall into and what we should do for those 

victims. 

David? 

Mr. ABRAMOWITZ. Thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee. 

It is very hard because there are so many different interventions 

that we need to consider. I think what Dr. Uprety is doing in terms 

of trying to educate women and girls, in particular, and also offering, as was said, some hope for the future, through talking about 

additional educational opportunities and so on, is an important 

part of the prevention piece. 

I think that in terms of trying to ensure that we use our diplomacy to try to make sure that discriminated populations, like Dr. 

D’souza said, are really highlighted, I think that Mr. Royce, one of 

the things that we should think about is trying to see if the President can raise the issue of the Dalits in some way. I think if the 

106

First Lady were to meet with Dalits while she was in India, that 

would have an amazing——

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Raise the issue—I am sorry? 

Mr. ABRAMOWITZ. Of Dalits—that is, the discriminated populations in India that have historical social discrimination against 

them. If she were to meet with a Dalit population and talk about 

the importance of education, those kinds of steps can have an important impact on raising issues in ways that are difficult to quantify but I think could have a real impact. 

I will just leave it at that and turn it over to Dr. Uprety. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much. 

Doctor? 

Dr. UPRETY. From my discussion with the police officers before 

I came here, we have found that girls below 12 had also been trafficked. And, from my personal experience, when I had been in some 

places where children are trafficked for circus, a 9-year-old girl had 

been trafficked from a district of Nepal to India. And later on, after 

2 or 3 years, she came back, and now she is one of our students. 

So, if you will look at that, children below 10 can also be trafficked, and 12, 13 also can be trafficked. And that is the saddest 

part of this human trafficking. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. So, we need to, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, 

take this to the highest level of our psychic, be as hostile against 

it as possible, and let people know that, when you are trafficked, 

you are also sexually violated and abused. 

And I join you—I know the First Lady has many issues. She is 

an eloquent spokesperson. And so I would like to join in that effort 

and join, also, as raising my voice against this dastardly deed. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BERMAN. Thank you. 

While I would really love to pursue some of the things more, we 

can’t. We are going to rush off to something else; I think all three 

of us have to do that and we are very grateful you came. We are 

going to follow up on your testimony and your suggestions and take 

it very seriously and maybe even raise this issue in our next meet 

meeting. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. ABRAMOWITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

(107)

A P P E N D I X 

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY MR. DAVID ABRAMOWITZ, DIRECTOR OF

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY ARUNA UPRETY, M.D., FOUNDER, RURAL

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