On Wednesday, the State Department released its annual “Trafficking in Persons” Report, which includes tier rankings of 188 countries based on their efforts (or lack of effort) to meet minimum anti-trafficking standards. I am happy to share that the 2013 TIP Report represents a major victory in the U.S. commitment to leadership on the issue of modern-day slavery.

Here’s why:

Tier rankings are generally based on an honest assessment of the facts, but in some cases diplomats are reluctant to complicate U.S. relations with powerful foreign governments. In recent years, anti-slavery advocates have worried about “grade inflation” for certain countries whose anti-slavery records did not justify their positive tier rankings.

To make matters more complicated, Congress enacted legislation in 2008 that set a limit of two years (plus an additional two years with a Presidential waiver) that countries could stay on the Tier II Watch List—a designation for countries that have not met minimum standards to eradicate slavery and trafficking and are not doing enough to improve. Perceiving that the Watch List had become a “parking lot” for countries that really belonged on the lowest Tier III, Congress enacted this “up or out” provision.

In theory, it made sense. In practice, however, some countries were moved up to Tier II at the insistence of powerful State Department regional bureaus—when they should have been demoted to Tier III based on the facts.

This year was a particular test of the integrity and independence of the TIP Report. A number of powerful countries, including Russia and China, had exhausted their time on the Tier II Watch List, and it was “up our out” time. We at IJM watched this process anxiously: If either Russia or China—which have appalling records on slavery—were promoted to Tier II, the integrity of the whole TIP Report was at risk.

We are thus very happy to share the news that Secretary of State John Kerry made the decision to relegate both China and Russia to Tier III—exactly where they belong. It was a no-brainer based on the facts. But given the political and diplomatic interests the U.S. has with each, it was a distinct possibility that the decision could have gone the other way.

We’re grateful that the recommendation of our government’s anti-slavery experts at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons carried the day. We are grateful for Secretary Kerry’s strong support of honest reporting and robust anti-slavery diplomacy. And we’re grateful to all of you who raised this important issue with your Members of Congress this year.

U.S. leadership in the fight against slavery starts with telling the truth about the problem. This week, the State Department did just that.

Read more about the TIP report release in the Washington Post.

Read IJM's press release about the 2013 TIP report.

Join IJM and advocates throughout California for exciting advocacy opportunities located here in our state! This year, we are working to pass “Safe Harbor” legislation in the state of California, which will protect child trafficking victims from being treated as criminals and ensure survivors receive the help they need. This bill (SB 738) has been introduced in the California state legislature and has already passed through the Health and Human Services and Judiciary Committees! Click here to learn more about SB 738.

There are two important ways Californians can help with this campaign right now:

• Take action now by sending a letter urging your local lawmakers to pass “Safe Harbor” legislation today. Signing this action alert will send a letter directly to your state legislators, asking for their support on this important bill.

• Sign up today to join us for our Safe Harbor Advocacy Weekend on June 23-24.
  • June 23: Join us for an advocacy workshop led by IJM’s Organizing & Advocacy Fellow, Kate Case, along with a presentation by Jocelyn White, IJM’s Director of Church Mobilization in California. This training will equip you with the tools you need to lobby your leaders and set concrete goals to grow the movement to end slavery.
  • June 24: Join us for a day of lobby meetings with your state representatives in Sacramento, where you’ll have the opportunity to ask for their support on SB 738.

If you have questions or are interested in getting more involved in our campaign to pass Safe Harbor in California, email Kate at kcase@ijm.org.

The anti-slavery cause got a huge boost last week when a prestigious advisory group to President Obama released comprehensive recommendations on ending trafficking at home and abroad.  The report was produced by the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.  The Council is a group of faith leaders who are appointed for one year to advise the president on public policies of particular concern to people of faith. 

This year’s leadership group first met to discuss trafficking in July 2012 and spent the next eight months educating themselves and crafting recommendations.  IJM was honored to be included in consultations with the Council and delighted with the recommendations that Council Chair Susie Stern presented to President Obama last week Tuesday. 

I met Ms. Stern at an event to launch the report. She told me that when she put it in President Obama’s hands she told him something she had learned from IJM’s Gary Haugen:  “Slaves are by definition the most powerless people on earth.  Therefore the only agency we have to represent them, the State Department’s TIP Office, must have maximum authority to speak for them.”

Susie Stern and her team, with the able assistance of Mara Vanderslice Kelly from the President’s Office, assembled a report that manages to be simultaneously aspirational and practical.  It is a robust blueprint for President Obama’s second term.  Among the provisions that mean the most to me are the following: 

• Combatting human trafficking requires funding appropriate to the scale of the crime…The anti-trafficking field, inside and outside of government, has matured significantly and is ready to absorb an exponential increase of investments needed to combat such a pervasive global evil.
• The Council appreciates and acknowledges not only the diplomacy and monitoring carried out by the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP), but the level of expertise and innovation the office brings to the anti-trafficking movement.  Elevate the Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) to a Bureau to increase its ability to lead the global effort to end modern slavery

These are exactly some of the requests that we and you have been making of the U.S. government over the past several years. To see them drawn out by faith leaders as critical needs in the fight against trafficking and given directly to the president is a great encouragement indeed.

These and other recommendations are echoed in a letter to President Obama circulated by IJM and signed by 50,000 Americans that we plan to deliver to the White House in early May. There’s still time to sign your name or ask your friends to sign.

Read the full report from the President’s Advisory Council here. 

“I am a cancer survivor, and having gone through cancer treatments it gives you the idea that life can be short and you’re not guaranteed a tomorrow. And for me that also increased my passion to be advocating on behalf of those who aren’t guaranteed a tomorrow either.”

Travis is a volunteer who helps lead IJM's advocacy work in West Virginia. Hear more of his story below.

In our Recipe for Change campaign last summer, we learned that most U.S. supermarkets have yet to take the necessary steps to ensure that their tomatoes are not picked by exploited, even enslaved, workers. The problem is real: The Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted 7 cases of slavery in the American Southeast in the past 15 years, freeing over 1200 workers.  Most of these cases were out of Florida.  Most involved tomatoes.  

So what would you do as an executive at Kroger – one of the nation’s largest supermarket chains, with more than 2,400 stores nationwide and $90 billion in annual sales – to guarantee you are not selling tomatoes tainted by slave labor? 

Hopefully – if you’re like executives at McDonald’s, Aramark, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Burger King, Subway, Chipotle or one of several other major companies – you forge a partnership with the farmworkers from Florida to guarantee an end to these kinds of labor abuses in your tomato supply chain.  And like these other companies, you join the Fair Food Program, a proven solution to slavery in Florida’s tomato fields.

Thanks to the Fair Food Program, huge progress has been made in cleaning up the U.S. tomato supply chain. But in order to ensure these transformational changes are protected, supermarkets—the largest tomato purchasers by far in this country—must join the movement to eliminate abuses in Florida’s tomato fields.

Your Voices Right To The Source

On February 12, International Justice Mission led a group of advocates to Kroger headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, with IJM’s state advocacy leaders David and Ann Haugen Michael (Ohio) and Elizabeth McCarty (Kentucky). We sat down with Kroger’s executive decision-makers and urged them to contact Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) leadership without delay to craft a Fair Food Agreement that works with Kroger’s tomato supply chain. We also delivered 11,000 letters from people all around the country – many of them Kroger customers – calling on the company to join the Fair Food Program.

Unfortunately, Kroger did not commit to join the Fair Food Program on February 12, and they weren’t able to give us a good reason for their refusal. It was a lively one-hour conversation, and we were tremendously grateful for the opportunity to dialogue, but we came away with persistent questions and concerns.

• Kroger acknowledges the powerful transformation accomplished by the Fair Food Program, and they benefit passively from the fact that the vast majority of Florida’s tomato growers have already implemented its code of conduct. But while Kroger benefits from the FFP, they have not led their peers in supporting it or paying for it. 
• Kroger does not have a neutral, transparent auditor to oversee the labor and growing practices in their supply chain. Instead, they rely on their own assessments to enforce their own code of conduct. Given the history of slavery cases in Florida, it’s pretty clear that without an independent mechanism to monitor and enforce worker protections, private codes of conduct are weak at best. Joining the Fair Food Program will guarantee that Kroger is, in fact, serious about ensuring a slave-free and abuse-free tomato supply chain. 

Looking Ahead

Even though Kroger did not come on board, we take heart because we communicated our request clearly and were able to deliver the 11,000 signatures of Americans who support the ask. We also take heart knowing that Kroger will continue to hear from farmworkers and advocates nationwide until they take action to ensure a clean supply chain.

Thank YOU for joining us in calling for a Recipe for Change at Kroger. One day, there will be justice in their supply chain because you called them to it first. 

Take Action Now!

We still need you! You can still take action for justice in America’s tomato fields. IJM President Gary Haugen recently joined faith and justice leaders from around the country in signing his name to a special ‘Letter of Conscience’ to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. We are asking Sec. Vilsack to help lead the U.S. Government in upholding the Fair Food Program by committing the USDA to purchase only fair food tomatoes. Add your name to this letter today!

Seth Wispelwey is a Field Organizer in the Government Relations and Advocacy Department at International Justice Mission.

After 2 ½ years of hard work and prayer, the IJM Advocacy team is excited to announce that the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) just passed the House of Representatives 286 to 138! Now it’s headed to the President—and we are confident he will sign it into law very soon.

Let me first thank each of you for the hours you’ve put into meetings, calls, events, collecting postcards, and praying to pass this bill. We could not have done it without your help, and we are delighted to share this victory with our friends across the globe.

As you may remember from a couple weeks ago, the TVPRA passed the Senate as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act with broad bipartisan support (93 to 5). Today, the House of Representatives passed that same version of VAWA, including the bipartisan TVPRA.

Getting the TVPRA to pass in Congress was no easy feat—IJM and our partners have been working for 2 ½ years to get to this point. The TVPRA must be reauthorized ever few years, but after it expired in 2011, it was more difficult than ever to get this important bill back on Congress’ agenda. Your voices helped show Congress that trafficking matters to Americans, and they took action!

This 2013 version of the TVPRA has some exciting new provisions as well:

• The Child Protection Compact Act, which we worked to pass for four years, will give the State Department authority to partner with overseas governments to stop child trafficking in targeted areas. It’s much more specific and measurable than previous programs—and it’s largely based off of the success of IJM’s casework in Cebu, the Philippines.
• An emergency response provision helps the State Department quickly deploy teams of experts into crisis areas—like the situation in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake—where disorder and poverty can leave children or other vulnerable poor especially susceptible to trafficking.
• New tools to help prosecute traffickers and people who exploit the poor
• Continued support for existing programs that support survivors of trafficking both in the U.S. and overseas

Overall, today’s passage of the TVPRA will be a huge win in this fight to protect the poor from slavery and trafficking. We are so grateful to Congress for putting aside partisan politics and reasserting our position as a global leader in this fight. Foreign governments will notice, and more importantly, so will those in need of rescue.

Read about the Senate's vote on TVPRA two weeks ago.

Annick Febrey is the Legislative Affairs Manager for International Justice Mission.

Tim (Nashotah, WI) helps lead IJM's advocacy work in the state of Wisconsin. Hear Tim's story about how he got involved in fighting human trafficking.

"I’m passionate about trafficking because in my lifetime I was sort of the bully magnet. I was the one that people picked on, and even people in authority at that time didn’t back me up…so I knew what it was like personally to be affected by people taking advantage of me. The human trafficking is really the same thing on a different scale. It fits right in to who I am as a person.”

In an historic decision this morning (and on the anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday), the U.S. Senate finally passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA)—extending critical protection to millions of men, women and children trapped in slavery around the world.

Leading the efforts to pass the TVPRA this year were Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). After the TVPRA failed to pass last session, these senators worked diligently across party lines to uphold this important piece of our nation’s anti-slavery history.  

The Long Struggle with Slavery

In 2013, we are still struggling with the cruelty of slavery in our world, but on a scale too massive to ignore. Human traffickers generate $32 billion in illegal profit each year and exploit 27 million slaves across the globe. 

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is the landmark U.S. law designed to combat trafficking both at home and abroad. First passed in 2000, the TVPA provided a framework to protect victims, prosecute traffickers and help prevent this crime before it occurs. The TVPA needs to be reauthorized every few years, and has passed unanimously three times since 2000. The last reauthorization ran out in September 2011 as partisan politics prevailed and Congress failed to act. 

New Action to Protect the Vulnerable

Today, Senators Leahy and Rubio worked across party lines to protect this important bill. They introduced the text of the TVPRA from last session as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act, which also stood for reauthorization this year. Following their leadership, 93 senators voted to support the TVPRA and continue our country’s global leadership in the anti-slavery movement. 

Their leadership was bolstered by the support and the voices of IJM supporters around the nation. Last year, IJM was able to deliver tens of thousands of postcards from IJM abolitionists calling on their members to pass the TVPRA. With its passage in the Senate today, all of those voices have been heard!

We hope that one day 150 years from now, the U.S. can look back at today as one milestone that helped end slavery once and for all.

What You Can Do Today

Now that the votes are cast, this is a great time to follow up with your Senators. We’ve listed how each Senator voted below. Feel free to use the sample scripts below for your calls. 

Sample script for Senators who voted YEA in support of the TVPRA:

“Hi, my name is [YOUR NAME] and I live in [YOUR CITY & STATE] and I want to thank the Senator for [HIS/HER] support on the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act on Tuesday.  Will you pass my message on to the Senator? Thank you!”

Sample script for Senators who voted NAY on the TVPRA:

“Hi, my name is [YOUR NAME] and I live in [YOUR CITY & STATE]. I learned that the Senator voted against the Trafficking Victims Protection Authorization Act on Tuesday, and I just wanted to let the Senator know that I was disappointed to hear that. The TVPRA provides a foundation for the U.S. government’s anti-trafficking efforts around the world, and this is an issue I care about a lot. Will you pass my message on to the Senator? Thank you!”

YEAs ---93

NAYs ---5

Not Voting - 2

Wow, what an incredible and blessed year it’s been.

What’s been most encouraging to our IJM Justice Campaigns team here in D.C. is our advocates’ persistence in making this fight against human trafficking not ours – but yours. 27 million slaves is not a small number, and we are so encouraged by your support and leadership. We know that one milestone at a time we will make freedom real.

And many milestones we’ve celebrated in these last twelve months! We know that now is the time to raise the stakes and work even harder to end slavery in the U.S. and around the world. But before we do, we want to pause and celebrate what you’ve accomplished this year with us.

2012 milestones and shared victories

January 1 – Google joins us in the fight against slavery, and turns up the heat to fund mobilizing advocates in the U.S. and overseas in India.

January 17 – Your Voices Heard: The state legislature in New Jersey passed a crucial piece of legislation that will aid victims of human trafficking. This bill, called a safe harbor law, is an important step forward in the fight against slavery right here in our own country.

January 24 – With the President’s State of the Union address that night, Justice Campaigns advocates around the country begin mobilizing others to  ask the President to make slavery a priority. Goal set: 27,000 signatures (symbolizing the 27 million slaves around the world).

February 29 – We meet our goal of 27,000 signatures for President Obama, but decide to build on this momentum to mobilize even more voices (see a video from Holly).

March 11 – 72 Days for Freedom Campaign launches – Atlanta’s Passion City Church joins Justice Campaigns to turn the 27,000 number upside down and sets a new goal of 72,000 signatures asking President Obama to help end slavery..

April 5 – Your Voices Heard: West Virginia became the 49^th state to pass a criminal law against human trafficking. The bill criminalizes both labor and sex trafficking and authorizes training for law enforcement to help them identify and investigate trafficking cases. Advocates throughout West Virginia had worked hard to lay the groundwork for this bill’s passing, including IJM state advocacy leaders Travis Wirt and Kendra Rogers, who worked to educate their state legislators about the bill and were invited to attend the bill signing.

April 16 – On IJM Justice Campaigns’ annual lobby day, advocates from 40 states around the country joined us to storm the Hill and make our voices heard to Congress. 

April 26 – 72 Days for Freedom is a huge success – and 72,000^th person signs a letter to President Obama.

June 18 - On the same day the U.S. State Department issued the annual Trafficking Persons (TIP) Report, Gary Haugen, IJM’s CEO and President received the abolition movement’s highest honor. The U.S. State Department awarded Gary and nine others its annual anti-trafficking TIP Hero award. Gary also delivers the 73,000 letters to President Obama, along with Louis Giglio of Passion City Church.

June 20 – IJM Justice Campaigns announces Recipe for Change, its first-ever domestic supply chain advocacy campaign to end slavery in Florida’s tomato fields. Celebrity bloggers, food advocates and hundreds of others joined us to spread the word. Nearly 8,000 emails were sent to CEOs from major supermarkets that have not signed onto the Fair Food Program, and more than 3,000 tweets shared our message.

July 17 – Holly Burkhalter, our VP of Government Relations, testifies before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations along with Jada Pinkett Smith and David Abramowitz. As she describes in her letter from Washington, she expresses her excitement for the opportunity she had to speak with one voice collectively about the issues we care about. Meeting the Smiths wasn’t bad, either.

September 1 – Advocates around the country gather around major supermarket chain locations of companies who have not signed onto the Fair Food Program in Recipe for Change’s National Day of Action.

September 25 – Your Voices Heard: A the Clinton Global Initiative conference, the President of the United States delivers a speech that squarely addresses the issue of modern day slavery and includes several new initiatives to combat it. President Obama also issues an Executive Order to address slavery in U.S. government contracts, one of the main priorities identified in the  73,000 letters we delivered.

November 14 - The Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking is formed, co-chaired by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rob Portman (R-OH). This Caucus will provide a multijurisdictional forum where members can come together to combat human trafficking. Senator Portman's championing in the fight against slavery was emboldened through the advocacy of thousands of Ohioans.

November 27: The U.S. State Department, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center honors IJM President and CEO Gary Haugen as the second American to receive this year’s TIP Hero award. At the reception, they also unveil the film Journey to Freedom, which includes stories of anti-trafficking victims and heroes—a film played in U.S. Embassies around the globe.

November 29 - Your Voices Heard: The Senate and House pass the End Trafficking in Government Contracting Act, which requires government contractors to take full responsibility for the actions of their subcontractors and recruiters regarding labor trafficking.

As we wrap up this year and look back on these victories from 2012 which we share together, let’s be encouraged about our journey ahead. As Holly puts it, now the hard work begins, but 2012 has shown us better than ever that together we are capable of moving the needle.

We’re so grateful to be in this together with you—thank you for leading the fight to end slavery with us.

Gratefully,

IJM Justice Campaigns

Watch Journey to Freedom here: