WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the Committee’s hearing, “Examining U.S. and Global Commitments to Combatting Human Trafficking.” The witnesses for the hearing were the Honorable Cynthia Dyer, the Ambassador-at-Large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking, and Mr. Johnny Walsh, Senior Bureau Official of the Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“It is an absolute travesty that traffickers are preying on Venezuelans fleeing for their lives from their country, on migrants desperate to escape hunger and conflict in the Horn of Africa, and it is despicable that they take advantage of Putin’s invasion to exploit Ukrainian refugees,” said Chairman Menendez. “So we, in the United States, need to be doing everything in our power to end global human trafficking.”
WATCH THE CHAIRMAN’S OPENING REMARKS HERE
A copy of the Chairman’s prepared remarks have been provided below.
“It has been more than two decades since Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, and yet today men, women, and children are still bought and sold in virtually every country in the world.
It is an absolute travesty that traffickers are preying on Venezuelans fleeing for their lives from their country, on migrants desperate to escape hunger and conflict in the Horn of Africa, and it is despicable that they take advantage of Putin’s invasion to exploit Ukrainian refugees, 90 percent of whom are women and girls who are desperate for protection from sexual violence.
The vast majority of trafficking victims are women and girls.
If we are serious about combatting human trafficking, the United States must redouble our support for policies and programs that empower women and girls, as we tackle the root causes that open the door to such exploitation.
Ms. Dyer and Mr. Walsh, I commend the work both of you and your departments are doing.
I know it is not easy and we have made meaningful steps in recent decades.
But despite elevating the issue to a global scale and putting in place legal frameworks to hold traffickers to account, about 25 million people still live in what amounts to slavery.
Traffickers still rake in an estimated $150 billion dollars annually.
So, I hope our witnesses will speak about what the United States is doing to address the root causes that leave people vulnerable and the prevention efforts to stop would-be traffickers: ending extreme poverty; ending gender-based violence that so many women and girls endure – whether it is sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and forced marriage; and fixing a broken migration system here in the United States that allows coyotes and other human smugglers to force children into debt bondage.
Forced labor trafficking is ultimately the result of governments failing to protect workers’ rights.
When employers don’t respect labor laws, it creates an environment where workers are vulnerable to exploitation.
Any approach to combating trafficking must begin with empowered workers who can stand up for themselves.
That means reforming labor laws to protect migrant and domestic workers.
These victims of human trafficking are cooking, cleaning, gardening and taking care of children. They often work 16 hours a day for little or no pay.
I have fought to make sure the State Department’s Trafficking In Persons Report, which just came out last week, serves as an unbiased, powerful tool to combat trafficking. And I’ve pushed back against Administrations of both parties who would have politicized the report because I believe this a problem that needs to be addressed in a bipartisan manner.
Senator Risch and I have reintroduced the International Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which passed the Senate in the last Congress.
It will strengthen our ability to hold governments accountable and expand prevention efforts at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and it will help combat trafficking of domestic workers by diplomats and UN officials here in the United States.
We also need to hold governments accountable for their failure to take basic steps to address human trafficking.
I’m talking about holding China accountable for its reprehensible use of forced labor in its Belt and Road Initiative. I’m talking about holding Russia and Cambodia and Eritrea accountable. I’m talking about holding the United States accountable as well.
I’ll end by noting that this year the government settled a case where more than 100 – mostly Spanish-speaking children – were working graveyard shifts at our nation’s largest slaughterhouses. This is dangerous work, hazardous machinery industrial chemicals, and extreme temperature changes.
Some of them were just 13 years old. This is completely outrageous and unacceptable.
The head of the Alabama Office of Homeland Security Investigations said, “As the government, we’ve turned a blind eye to their trafficking.”
And a New York Times article went on to say, “he teared up as he recalled finding 13-year-olds working in meat plants.”
This is not a problem limited to some far-flung corner of the world.
It is a problem we see at our southern border, and it is a problem that stretches into the American heartland.
So we, in the United States, need to be doing everything in our power to end global human trafficking.
I think we can do better, I think we can do more, and I look forward to doing that.”
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