[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 129 (Wednesday, November 15, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2044-E2045]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              IN RECOGNITION OF AMBASSADOR JOHN R. MILLER

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. CAROLYN B. MALONEY

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 15, 2006

  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the work of one of the 
leaders of the modern-day abolitionist movement, Ambassador John R. 
Miller, who has announced he will step down as Director of the U.S. 
Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in 
Persons.
  He will be greatly missed.
  As Ambassador Miller has often reminded us, trafficking in persons is 
modern-day slavery. With that conviction, he has led his office, and 
the whole of U.S. government, on a mission to settle for nothing short 
of the abolition of this terrible international crime.
  Under Ambassador Miller's leadership, the U.S. government has grown 
in its commitment--both at home and abroad--against modern-day slavery. 
His work has helped spotlight the issue of slavery around the world, 
through the annual Secretary of State's Trafficking in Persons Report, 
diplomatic engagement, speeches and multiple prosecution, protection, 
and prevention programs around the world.
  Earlier this year, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof 
praised the U.S. commitment to abolishing modern-day slavery, noting:

       [T]he heaviest lifting has been done by the State 
     Department's tiny office on trafficking--for my money, one of 
     the most effective units in the U.S. government. The office, 
     led by a former Republican congressman, John Miller . . . 
     puts out an annual report that shames and bullies foreign 
     governments into taking action against forced labor of all 
     kinds.

  The 2006 Trafficking in Persons Report is the most comprehensive 
worldwide report on the efforts of governments to combat severe forms 
of trafficking in persons. Along with previous editions, its findings 
have raised global awareness and compelled countries to take effective 
actions to counter human trafficking. Under Ambassador Miller's 
direction, the Report has steadily increased its country assessment 
total each year--from 124 governments reviewed in 2003 to 158 countries 
assessed in the 2006 TIP Report.
  During that time, Ambassador Miller also oversaw crucial refinements 
to the Report, elevating the annual compendium to a level of 
sophistication rarely enjoyed by a publication of its kind: the 
Trafficking in Persons Report has become the gold standard on which 
governments and the media are able to weigh progress on the global 
effort to fight human trafficking.
  Annual release of the report has also generated increasing media 
coverage, helping raise global consciousness of the existence and 
widespread problem of modern-day slavery. Release of the 2006 Report, 
for example, produced widespread coverage by national and international 
print, broadcast, and Internet media, reaching, for the second year in 
a row, more than 400 million people across the globe. Media coverage 
was particularly intense in many of the Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watch List 
countries, such as Saudi Arabia and India.

  Today, the TIP Report is the essential reference for global 
benchmarks that challenge all governments to join the 21st century 
abolitionist movement. The annual Trafficking in Persons Report serves 
as the primary diplomatic tool through which the U.S. Government 
encourages partnership and increased determination in the fight against 
forced labor, sexual exploitation, and modern-day slavery.
  ``In our judgment,'' declared Dr. Mohamed Mattar, Executive Director 
of the Protection Project, ``this report constitutes the primary 
reference and main source of information on efforts made by foreign 
governments to combat trafficking in persons.''
  Armed with the report, Ambassador Miller has engaged with governments 
from Japan to Jamaica, from Belize to Bangladesh, to bring about 
improved law enforcement, victim protection, and prevention of this 
odious crime. Worldwide, Ambassador Miller's diplomatic leadership 
helped spur new or improved anti-human trafficking legislation in 41 
countries in 2005, along with the establishment of dozens of new 
survivor shelters. That effort paid huge dividends: anti-trafficking 
convictions worldwide increased from several hundred, before Ambassador 
Miller arrived at the State Department, to over 4,700 in 2005. Last 
year's figure--an increase from about 3,000 the year before--was 
especially dramatic among countries in Africa (from 29 TIP convictions 
in 2004 to 58 in 2005) and East Asia and Pacific nations (from 348 TIP 
convictions in 2004 to 2,347 in 2005).
  Specifically, Ambassador Miller's diplomatic efforts helped persuade 
Japan to vastly reduce the number of TIP-exploitable ``entertainment 
visas'' Japan issued for young women from the Philippines--to fewer 
than 5,000, from a high of 80,000 a year. In addition, Ambassador 
Miller has carefully honed the report's system of tier rankings to 
cultivate global anti-TIP efforts. This year, for example, Malawi rose 
from Tier 2 to Tier 1 on the TIP Report, while Ecuador rose from Tier 3 
to Tier 2.
  Over the last 2 years, Ambassador Miller helped enhance the U.S. 
government's anti-trafficking efforts to include a greater focus 
against child sex tourism (CST), a crime in which people travel from 
their own country to developing countries, such as Laos or Cambodia, 
looking for anonymity and the availability of children in prostitution. 
Ambassador Miller's leadership against CST has netted success, as Time 
magazine recently observed:

       Those working to protect children in Cambodia agree that 
     the police force has recently shown a far stronger commitment 
     to targeting pedophiles. But it's not just law and order that 
     is doing the trick. A new political will to root them out is 
     the result of diplomatic incentives and pressures, both the 
     carrots of international donors and the stick of the U.S. 
     State Department, say child protection workers. . . . But the 
     stick came in 2005 when the U.S. State Department, fed up 
     with the impunity enjoyed by traffickers here, relegated 
     Cambodia to it lowest tier three rating on its global 
     trafficking report. Cambodia was lumped in with Burma, Cuba 
     and North Korea, and Washington threatened sanctions against 
     Phnom Penh for its inability to comply with `minimum 
     standards' to combat human trafficking and convict officials 
     involved.

  In part because of Ambassador Miller's efforts, since 2003 over 30 
American pedophiles have been extradited back to the U.S. and sent to 
jail.
  With Ambassador Miller's prodding, the United States last December 
became an official party to the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and 
Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, also 
known as the Palermo Protocol. The Trafficking in Persons (TIP) 
Protocol, which supplements the U.N. Convention Against Transnational 
Organized Crime, is an important multilateral component of the 
worldwide effort to combat modern-day slavery. It seeks to prevent 
trafficking, protect victims, and promote anti-trafficking cooperation 
among nations.
  As chairman of the interagency Senior Policy Operating Group, 
Ambassador Miller has improved coordination among U.S. agencies, 
helping to make the panel a decision-making body whose participants 
have furthered the U.S. effort against trafficking in person both at 
home and abroad. For example, the Department of Justice (DOJ), in 2005 
charged 116 individuals with human trafficking, almost doubling the 
number charged in FY 2004. Approximately 80 percent of those defendants 
were charged under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act 
(TVPA) of 2000. Forty-five traffickers were convicted, of which 35

[[Page E2045]]

were implicated in sexual exploitation. As of May 22, 2006, the 
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had certified 1,000 
victims of human trafficking since the TVPA was signed into law in 
October 2000. In FY 2005, HHS certified 230 foreign victims of human 
trafficking from a remarkably diverse array of countries.
  On a personal note, during his tenure as Director of the State 
Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, 
Ambassador John R. Miller has been a friend and colleague to those of 
us in Congress who have taken a leadership role against modern-day 
slavery. We wish him well in his future work as a Professor of 
International Studies at George Washington University.

                          ____________________