The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (HR 972) was recently reauthorized by Congress, extending funding for trafficking prevention and victim protection through 2007. The legislation authorized approximately $180 million per year.
The legislation addresses many dimensions of trafficking, by enacting measures designed to combat labor trafficking, the use of child soldiers, and sex trafficking both domestically and in the US’s foreign and military affairs. Domestically, the legislation creates pilot programs for residential treatment facilities for juvenile trafficking victims, and a grant program for law enforcement agencies to use in combating forms of human trafficking. Furthermore, the legislation reaches into foreign affairs by enhancing US efforts to prevent trafficking in peacekeeping and antiterrorism efforts, making sex and labor trafficking criminal offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and calling for the Department of Defense to create a director of anti-trafficking policies.
Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) praised the legislation, and its inclusion of the End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act, which she and Representative Deborah Price (D-OH) cosponsored. According to The Source on Women’s Issues in Congress, Maloney said that the law “seeks to reduce demand for sex trafficking by providing critical funding to law enforcement to prosecute the demand side, the purchasers… sex traffickers and exploiters… It is important that we protect the victims of the sex trade industry and punish the predators and those who are doing this terrible thing.”
The Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing works with law enforcement at all levels of government to ensure the enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
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