•HRES 508 IH 
Whereas 61 years ago the international community, acting 
through the United Nations, affirmed its opposition to 
modern-day slavery and human trafficking, expressed its 
resolve to combat this evil, and proclaimed December 2 
as ‘‘International Day for the Abolition of Slavery’’; 
Whereas 10 years ago the international community, acting 
through the United Nations, adopted a modern-day-slav-
ery-based tool to combat human trafficking, the Protocol 
to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, 
Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the 
United Nations Convention against Transnational Orga-
nized Crime, creating the modern ‘‘3P’’ approach of 
fighting servitude through prevention, protection, and 
prosecution; 
Whereas the international community has also adopted, and 
the United States has also ratified, other instruments to 
combat the trafficking in persons and modern-day slav-
ery, including the International Labor Organization Con-
vention 182, Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate 
Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child 
Labor, Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights 
of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution 
and Child Pornography, Optional Protocol to the Conven-
tion on the Rights of the Child in Armed Conflict, Inter-
national Labor Organization Convention 29, Concerning 
Forced or Compulsory Labour, and International Labor 
Organization Convention 105, Concerning the Abolition 
of Forced Labour; 
Whereas despite the efforts of governments and nongovern-
mental organizations, including but not limited to, 
Human Rights Watch, Global Rights, the Coalition to 
Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, Safe Horizon, Freedom 
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•HRES 508 IH 
Network, United and its partners in the Alliance to End 
Slavery and Trafficking, the Polaris Project, and the 
Frederick Douglass Family Foundation, to eradicate the 
scourge of human trafficking, the problem persists and 
manifests itself in the modern era, whether termed mod-
ern-day slavery, forced labor, involuntary domestic ser-
vitude, sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, bonded labor, 
forced child labor, child soldiers, or debt bondage among 
migrant laborers; 
Whereas the International Labor Organization estimates that 
at any given time at least 12,300,000 adults and children 
live in conditions of forced labor and sexual servitude and 
that at least 1,390,000 persons are victims of national 
and transnational sex trafficking; 
Whereas it is estimated that between 600,000 and 800,000 
victims are moved across international borders every year 
and subjected to compelled service and millions more are 
enslaved domestically within their own countries; 
Whereas according to the 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) 
Report of the United States Department of State, each 
year an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are 
trafficked into the United States with the largest number 
of people trafficked into the United States coming from 
East Asia and the Pacific and the next highest numbers 
coming from Latin America, Europe, and Eurasia; 
Whereas these numbers pale in comparison to the number of 
persons subjected to bondage within the United States 
each year, with an estimated 200,000 children in the 
United States at risk for trafficking into the sex indus-
try; 
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•HRES 508 IH 
Whereas 56 percent of victims of modern-day slavery are 
women and children because traffickers prey on those 
who suffer most from gender discrimination, family vio-
lence, and a lack of access to education and economic op-
portunity; 
Whereas human trafficking is one of the fastest growing 
criminal enterprises in the 21st century generating prof-
its for traffickers in excess of $30,000,000,000 according 
to the International Labor Organization, ranking with 
drug smuggling and arms dealing in organized crime ac-
tivities; 
Whereas as the 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report of 
the United States Department of State indicates, human 
trafficking is a multidimensional threat in that it de-
prives people of their human rights and freedoms, in-
creases global health risks, and fuels the growth of orga-
nized crime; and 
Whereas there remains a stark disparity between the large 
global problem of trafficking in persons and the low num-
bers of prosecutions and convictions of forced labor traf-
ficking crimes, which accounted for less than 3 percent 
of all convictions worldwide in 2009: Now, therefore, be 
it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) supports the goals and ideals of Inter-
national Day for the Abolition of Slavery; 
(2) recognizes the 10th anniversary of the adop-
tion of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Pun-
ish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and 
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•HRES 508 IH 
Children, Supplementing the United Nations Con-
vention against Transnational Organized Crime; 
(3) encourages member states of the United 
Nations and international organizations to devote 
additional resources to apprehend, prosecute, and 
punish persons engaged in human trafficking and to 
detect, disrupt, and dismantle criminal enterprises 
organized for that purpose; 
(4) urges all members of the international com-
munity to commemorate the 10th year of the Pro-
tocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in 
Persons, 
Especially 
Women 
and 
Children, 
Supplementing the United Nations Convention 
against Transnational Organized Crime by redou-
bling their efforts and renewing their resolve to 
eradicating the modern-day slavery crisis of traf-
ficking in persons from the face of the Earth; 
(5) encourages the people of the United States 
to observe the International Day for the Abolition of 
Slavery by participating in activities designed to 
heighten public awareness of the prevalence of 
human trafficking; and 
(6) commends the efforts of domestic and inter-
national nongovernmental organizations to expose, 
prevent, and document all forms of modern-day slav-
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•HRES 508 IH 
ery and human trafficking and to assist victims re-
integrate into society and notes that such efforts 
honor the legacy and follow in the tradition of Fred-
erick Douglass and other great abolitionists of the 
19th century who devoted their lives to the struggle 
for freedom, human dignity, and the full measure of 
civil and human rights for all men and women. 
Æ 
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