Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPRA) provides the tools necessary to provide services to survivors and to combat trafficking and modern-day slavery at home and abroad.
What will this reauthorization accomplish?
- Provides invaluable resources to support holistic services for survivors and to enable law enforcement to investigate cases, to hold perpetrators accountable, and prevent slavery from happening in the first place.
- Prevents U.S. foreign aid from going to countries that use child soldiers.
- Penalizes the confiscation of identity documents, a prevalent form of coercion that traffickers use to exploit victims.
- Creates a grant-‐making program to respond to humanitarian emergencies that result in an increased risk of trafficking, such as the situation in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake when children’s vulnerability to re-‐trafficking escalated sharply.
- Authorizes the J/Tip office to form local partnerships in focus countries to combat child trafficking through Child Protection Compacts.
- Enhances law enforcement capacity to combat sex tourism by extending jurisdiction under the 2003 PROTECT Act to prosecute U.S. citizens living abroad who commercially sexually exploit children.
Why should your office support this?
- Congress has reauthorized the TVPA every two to four years since its original passage in 2000. As knowledge in this area continues to grow on how to effectively combat human trafficking in the United States and abroad, this law must be reauthorized to provide the United States with further tools and resources to combat this heinous crime.
- Reflecting a fiscally responsible approach, TVPRA cuts authorizations by one-‐third across the board compared to levels set by the last reauthorization in 2008.
- There are an estimated 27 million slaves worldwide, more than at any other time in history. Together, human trafficking and slavery are among the most lucrative criminal enterprises.
- This legislation strengthens the tools necessary to combat human trafficking both here and abroad, and improves the means with which we can prevent trafficking, protect victims, and enhance prosecutions.
- Several measures impose rigorous compliance and reporting requirements on federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, to ensure that the U.S. government is not spending taxpayer money to support human trafficking around the globe.
- This reauthorization emphasizes the victim-‐ centered approach that has been critical in fighting human trafficking. It is an opportunity to continue the fight to end modern slavery in our generation.