The Need To End Predatory Conditions - A Response To The 2020 TIP Report

As politics and news coverage ramp up to the election on Nov. 3, issues like sex trafficking tend to get lost in the fray. As a reminder of the importance of staying focused on protecting children, ECPAT-USA is publishing this previously unreleased blog post from Jackie Shapiro, ECPAT-USA UN ECOSOC Main Representative and former Chairperson of the ECPAT-USA Board of Directors, on our organization’s response to this year’s Trafficking in Persons Report. 

Read the full TIP Report

The Trafficking in Persons Report is an annual publication of the United States State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. It ranks 187 countries on the basis of its own assessment of the governments’ efforts to combat human trafficking based on the standards established in the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

This year’s stated focus is on domestic trafficking while acknowledging the prevalence of transnational human trafficking. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 77% of trafficking is domestic.

Since 2010, the United States has included itself in this ranking of national anti-trafficking initiatives and has always given itself top marks. This rating is not undeserved as a comparative value since the U.S. has applied considerable resources to addressing human trafficking, but there remains an inadequate focus on prevention.

According to this year’s report, the U.S. should be lauded for improving the training, coordination, and cooperation of many agencies of government working to combat human trafficking, but it is, by its own admission, weak in prosecuting and convicting human traffickers. The Report cites a decrease in secured convictions over the previous year. As long as trafficking is allowed to flourish with impunity, the well-being of countless victims and would-be victims of sex and labor trafficking is in peril.

Another equally important but less addressed issue to prevent trafficking is the recognition that it is rooted in racial discrimination. It is only by also allocating resources to address the root causes of vulnerability to trafficking - poverty, racial inequality, and family dysfunction - that human trafficking can be curtailed.

In particular, children who lack agency for themselves must be prioritized in these initiatives. The TIP Report mentions that only 34 states have “safe harbor” laws, which means 16 states continue to allow children to be arrested when they are trafficked in the sex industry. Further, though 76,000 children were detained at the Mexican border in the last year, the Report notes that “HHS assisted 228 foreign national child victims of trafficking.” Such a very small number clearly indicates a lack of political will to protect migrant and refugee children.

The United States’ efforts to combat human trafficking will continue to fall short if its policies and programs fail to end the predatory conditions of racial discrimination that perpetuate human trafficking.

Get the latest on the issue and our work to protect children across the country from exploitation by signing up for our newsletter here.