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“TRIBUTE TO NANCY KASSEBAUM BAKER AND AMBASSADOR HOWARD BAKER” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S9213-S9214 on Sept. 14, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO NANCY KASSEBAUM BAKER AND AMBASSADOR HOWARD BAKER
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I welcome this opportunity to pay tribute to our former Senate colleagues, Nancy Kassebaum Baker and Ambassador Howard Baker, for their leadership in organizing a regional conference in Tokyo on ``strategies for combating human trafficking in Asia.'' Together, they led the U.S. Embassy's effort to bring together government officials, nongovernmental organizations and multilateral organizations in a 2-day conference in June on the most effective ways to deal with the global scourge of human trafficking. The conference was cosponsored by the Vital Voices Global Partnership and the International Labor Organization.
The conference took place several days after the publication of the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report. Japan and other countries were placed on the ``watch list'' for not fully complying with minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking. Officials from the National Policy Agency of Japan and the Justice Ministry participated in the conference, and several high level officials were among the keynote speakers. Japan announced that it has established an inter-ministerial body to address the challenge through a number of actions, including drafting new legislation to strengthen existing rules and penalties. Representatives from many other countries including India, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Russia, and Colombia, also participated in the conference, as did U.S. Government officials.
Each year, at least 1 million human beings, predominantly women and children, are shipped across national boundaries and sold into what has become modern-day slavery. Traffickers use fraud, coercion and outright kidnapping to obtain their victims. No country is immune from this problem. Both the United States and Japan are destination countries. Such trafficking is a flourishing criminal industry, second only to criminal drug and arms trafficking. Human trafficking is an urgent global challenge and progress against it is possible only through international cooperation.
As Ambassador Baker said in opening the meeting: ``I hope the ideas that come out of this conference help victims all over the world.'' I commend our two former Senate colleagues for convening this significant conference to raise international awareness of human trafficking and for bringing countries together to exchange best practices and develop effective strategies to combat it. Their leadership is an excellent example of our Nation's commitment to address this global scourge.
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