The Current
Advocacy News + Updates
TOP STORY
This spring, advocates across the nation rallied together to speak up for the 40 million people trapped in slavery (Global Slavery Index, 2018). As a movement, thousands of you leveraged the power of digital tools to raise your voices to your members of Congress through tweets, emails and online petitions. Together, we urged Congress to ensure that the State Department’s Program to End Modern Slavery and the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Office are fully funded in the 2020 appropriations bill. Here is a breakdown of the momentum you’ve built:
The Heritage Foundation, a Washington DC-based “think tank,” recently released a paper that criticizes the End Modern Slavery Initiative (EMSI), Senate legislation that would create a public-private foundation to combat the crime globally. One of Heritage’s criticisms was that the future EMSI Foundation would fund governments with very poor anti-trafficking records, such as those ranked Tier 2 Watch or Tier 3.
THE CITY OF NASHVILLE runs along the winding Cumberland River. To the east lie mountain ranges with names that have stories in them, like Great Smoky and Unicoi. Go west on the road to Jackson and Memphis, and you’ll come to the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf Coastal Plain.
We at IJM have been working around the clock over the past week to help our anti-slavery champion, Senator Bob Corker, bring the End Modern Slavery Initiative (EMSI) to the Senate floor for a vote. It is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, March 8. EMSI, if enacted, would create a public-private foundation to fund slavery eradication in heavily-burdened countries. EMSI’s approach prioritizes actually freeing slaves and bringing perpetrators to justice.