The Current

On June 19, Secretary of State John Kerry released the 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report), a diplomatic tool used to fight human trafficking around the world. You can check out IJM’s analysis and press release on the 2013 Report here.  Please consider submitting a Letter to the Editor of your local paper to increase coverage of the U.S. fight against modern-day slavery through this critical report.

A Letter to the Editor is typically written in response to an event recently covered in the newspaper.  Many papers will cover the launch of the 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report, and this is a great opportunity to respond.  Policy-makers pay attention to Letters to the Editor—one of the most read sections of the paper—so they are an important advocacy tool. 

You can use or edit the draft text below and follow these simple instructions to submit your own Letter to the Editor today! Let us know if you submit one—and if it’s published!—by emailing JusticeCampaigns@ijm.org.

Instructions for submitting your Letter to the Editor:

1. Look up your local newspaper’s website or call to find the email address for submitting Letters to the Editor.
2. If your paper has covered the TIP Report release or a related topic, start your letter with the following format: “Your article, ‘TITLE, by AUTHOR, on DATE…”
3. Feel free to rely on the draft text below. If you have time, add a line or two to personalize it. Keep the overall length to 150-200 words.
4. Include your name, title/affiliation (if relevant), and contact information.
5. TIP: Speed is (almost everything)! Editors receive hundreds of letters every day. Often deciding which ones to print boils down to timing. Responding to a news story the same day it was printed will greatly increase your chance of getting published.

Draft Text:

To the editor:

DRAFT LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

To the Editor:

This week, the U.S. State Department released its annual Trafficking in Persons Report. The report ranks 188 countries, including our own, into four tiers based on each country's efforts to combat trafficking and slavery.

Experts estimate that there are 27 million slaves in our world today, and human trafficking takes place in nearly every country.

This year, for the first time, the State Department was required by law to move six countries off the Tier 2 Watch List, either by automatically downgrading them to the lowest tier or moving them up if they've shown improvement over the past year. 

Three poorly performing countries—China, Russia and Uzbekistan—were downgraded to Tier 3 and now face possible sanctions. Other diplomatic and geopolitical pressures could have resulted in an undeserved upgrade, but the State Department stood firm.

This is a huge victory in the fight against slavery. Telling the truth about slavery preserves the integrity of this critical report and our own government’s moral and diplomatic leadership on the issue.