The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WILLIAM WILBERFORCE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION REAUTHORIZATION ACT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the in the Senate section section on pages S10936-S10937 on Dec. 11, 2008.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION REAUTHORIZATION ACT
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, yesterday, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Senate and House passed an important and comprehensive human rights bill: the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. I was a cosponsor of this bill in the Senate and celebrate its passage. I commend the leadership of Senators Biden and Brownback, Representatives Howard Berman and Chris Smith, and their staffs, for working with Federal agencies and service providers to craft a consensus, bipartisan bill that will enhance our national and global fight against the scourge of human trafficking. The TVPRA will strengthen the Federal Government's ability to prosecute traffickers, protect trafficking victims, and prevent future crimes.
It is impossible to discuss Congress's efforts to address the issue of human trafficking without acknowledging the invaluable contributions made by the late Paul Wellstone and the late Tom Lantos. Senator Wellstone was the moral conscience of the Senate, and he was the driving force behind the initial antitrafficking legislation passed by Congress in 2000 and signed into law by President Clinton.
Representative Lantos, who introduced the first version of the TVPRA in 2007, passed away earlier this year after nearly three decades of distinguished service in the House of Representatives. He was the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, and this experience as a victim of the 20th century's gravest human rights atrocity made him one of the leading voices in our time on human rights.
Passage of the TVPRA is a tribute to the leadership and legacies of Senator Wellstone and Representative Lantos.
I am pleased that the authors of the TVPRA included two of my human rights initiatives from the 110th Congress. First, the TVPRA contains a law enforcement initiative I introduced with Senator Coburn called the Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act, which will allow Federal prosecutors to investigate and prosecute traffickers found in the United States even if their trafficking crimes were committed abroad. This initiative, which I discussed in more detail in a Congressional Record statement on October 1, 2008, makes an important statement about this nation's intolerance for human rights abuses wherever they occur.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, working with other DOJ components and with U.S. attorney's offices around the country, brought a record number of trafficking prosecutions in fiscal year 2008, and the TVPRA provides the Justice Department with additional tools--including the Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act--to continue its vigorous fight against human trafficking.
The TVPRA also includes another human rights initiative of mine--the Child Soldier Prevention Act--to deter the use of children as soldiers in armed conflicts around the world. Each day, up to 250,000 children are exploited in state-run armies, paramilitaries, and guerilla groups around the world. These child soldiers serve as combatants, porters, human mine detectors, and sex slaves. Their health and lives are endangered and their childhoods are sacrificed. The lasting effects of war and abuse may also remain with them long after the shooting stops.
The Child Soldier Prevention Act, which I introduced with Senator Brownback in 2007, is designed to encourage governments to disarm, demobilize, and rehabilitate child soldiers that are being used and abused in government forces and government-supported militias. Using the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights as a barometer, this bill limits the provision of U.S. International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, and other defense-related assistance in our foreign operations programs for countries that use child soldiers. Countries that are identified in a Human Rights Report as recruiting or using child soldiers in government armed forces or government-supported paramilitaries or militias in violation of international standards would lose their eligibility for substantial U.S. assistance.
Ishmael Beah made a compelling case for the urgent need for this legislation in his testimony last year before my Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, and in his firsthand account of his years as a child soldier in Sierra Leone in his book ``A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.'' In his testimony before my subcommittee, Mr. Beah said:
As I speak to you, there are thousands of children from ages 8 to 17--in Burma, Sri Lanka, Congo, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Colombia, just to name a few places--that are being forced to fight and lose their childhoods and their families. They are maimed and lose their humanity, and these are the fortunate ones. Those who are less fortunate are killed in the senseless wars of adults.
There are credible reports that children are again being recruited to fight in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that has suffered a recent horrific surge in violence after years of being ravaged by war, and a country that receives U.S. military assistance. The United Nations Children's Fund reports that the forced recruitment of children as soldiers in Congo is widespread and on the rise. Since the most recent outbreak of violence in August, more than 250,000 people have been displaced. According to the U.N., children who flee their homes are often separated from their families, and therefore left unprotected and vulnerable to warring parties that force them into their armies.
The use of child soldiers directly contravenes U.S. policy and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which the United States ratified in 2002. The United States has a moral obligation to avoid funding armed forces that use child soldiers. I am proud that with the passage of the TVPRA, we have taken an important step to try to stop this abhorrent practice.
Finally, I want to highlight an important provision in the TVPRA that will crack down on foreign diplomats in the United States who abuse their domestic employees. At a Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee hearing I chaired in 2007 regarding human trafficking, we heard testimony from a distinguished human rights lawyer, Martina Vandenberg, who represents several trafficking victims in lawsuits against their traffickers. Due to the doctrine of diplomatic immunity, a legal principle that exempts certain government officials from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, Ms. Vandenberg indicated that such lawsuits are routinely dismissed.
A July 2008 GAO report, which Senator Coburn and I requested, revealed that there have been 42 documented allegations in the United States of unlawful abuse, exploitation, or human trafficking by foreign diplomats with immunity since 2000, and that the Justice Department has opened 19 criminal investigations of foreign diplomats in the past three years alone. These are not isolated incidents.
The TVPRA requires the Secretary of State to suspend the issuance of A-3 and G-5 visas--used for the hiring of non-U.S. citizens as domestic workers--with respect to foreign diplomats employed by a country or international organization that has a record of tolerating the abuse or exploitation of domestic workers. The act also prevents such visas from being issued or renewed unless the domestic worker meets personally with a U.S. consular official outside the presence of the employer to go over their employment rights and protections. And the act contains a robust reporting requirement that will help keep Congress informed about future incidents of abuse of A-3 and G-5 visa holders, as well as about options to ensure that victims receive appropriate compensation if their rights are violated but they are prevented from seeking a remedy in court due to the assertion of diplomatic immunity.
Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. President-elect Barack Obama has called it ``a debasement of our common humanity.'' With the passage of the TVPRA--the fourth major antitrafficking bill passed by Congress in the past 8 years--Congress has once again exercised its moral leadership on one of the most urgent human rights challenges of our time.
____________________
