[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 186 (Thursday, December 11, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10936-S10937]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION REAUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, yesterday, on the 60th anniversary of 
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Senate and House passed 
an important and comprehensive human rights bill: the William 
Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. 
I was a cosponsor of this bill in the Senate and celebrate its passage. 
I commend the leadership of Senators Biden and Brownback, 
Representatives Howard Berman and Chris Smith, and their staffs, for 
working with Federal agencies and service providers to craft a 
consensus, bipartisan bill that will enhance our national and global 
fight against the scourge of human trafficking. The TVPRA will 
strengthen the Federal Government's ability to prosecute traffickers, 
protect trafficking victims, and prevent future crimes.
  It is impossible to discuss Congress's efforts to address the issue 
of human trafficking without acknowledging the invaluable contributions 
made by the late Paul Wellstone and the late Tom Lantos. Senator 
Wellstone was the moral conscience of the Senate, and he was the 
driving force behind the initial antitrafficking legislation passed by 
Congress in 2000 and signed into law by President Clinton.
  Representative Lantos, who introduced the first version of the TVPRA 
in 2007, passed away earlier this year after nearly three decades of 
distinguished service in the House of Representatives. He was the only 
Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, and this experience as a 
victim of the 20th century's gravest human rights atrocity made him one 
of the leading voices in our time on human rights.

[[Page S10937]]

  Passage of the TVPRA is a tribute to the leadership and legacies of 
Senator Wellstone and Representative Lantos.
  I am pleased that the authors of the TVPRA included two of my human 
rights initiatives from the 110th Congress. First, the TVPRA contains a 
law enforcement initiative I introduced with Senator Coburn called the 
Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act, which will allow Federal 
prosecutors to investigate and prosecute traffickers found in the 
United States even if their trafficking crimes were committed abroad. 
This initiative, which I discussed in more detail in a Congressional 
Record statement on October 1, 2008, makes an important statement about 
this nation's intolerance for human rights abuses wherever they occur.
  The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, working with other 
DOJ components and with U.S. attorney's offices around the country, 
brought a record number of trafficking prosecutions in fiscal year 
2008, and the TVPRA provides the Justice Department with additional 
tools--including the Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act--to 
continue its vigorous fight against human trafficking.
  The TVPRA also includes another human rights initiative of mine--the 
Child Soldier Prevention Act--to deter the use of children as soldiers 
in armed conflicts around the world. Each day, up to 250,000 children 
are exploited in state-run armies, paramilitaries, and guerilla groups 
around the world. These child soldiers serve as combatants, porters, 
human mine detectors, and sex slaves. Their health and lives are 
endangered and their childhoods are sacrificed. The lasting effects of 
war and abuse may also remain with them long after the shooting stops.
  The Child Soldier Prevention Act, which I introduced with Senator 
Brownback in 2007, is designed to encourage governments to disarm, 
demobilize, and rehabilitate child soldiers that are being used and 
abused in government forces and government-supported militias. Using 
the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights as a barometer, 
this bill limits the provision of U.S. International Military Education 
and Training, Foreign Military Financing, and other defense-related 
assistance in our foreign operations programs for countries that use 
child soldiers. Countries that are identified in a Human Rights Report 
as recruiting or using child soldiers in government armed forces or 
government-supported paramilitaries or militias in violation of 
international standards would lose their eligibility for substantial 
U.S. assistance.
  Ishmael Beah made a compelling case for the urgent need for this 
legislation in his testimony last year before my Senate Judiciary 
Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, and in his firsthand account 
of his years as a child soldier in Sierra Leone in his book ``A Long 
Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.'' In his testimony before my 
subcommittee, Mr. Beah said:

       As I speak to you, there are thousands of children from 
     ages 8 to 17--in Burma, Sri Lanka, Congo, Uganda, Ivory 
     Coast, Colombia, just to name a few places--that are being 
     forced to fight and lose their childhoods and their families. 
     They are maimed and lose their humanity, and these are the 
     fortunate ones. Those who are less fortunate are killed in 
     the senseless wars of adults.

  There are credible reports that children are again being recruited to 
fight in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that has suffered 
a recent horrific surge in violence after years of being ravaged by 
war, and a country that receives U.S. military assistance. The United 
Nations Children's Fund reports that the forced recruitment of children 
as soldiers in Congo is widespread and on the rise. Since the most 
recent outbreak of violence in August, more than 250,000 people have 
been displaced. According to the U.N., children who flee their homes 
are often separated from their families, and therefore left unprotected 
and vulnerable to warring parties that force them into their armies.
  The use of child soldiers directly contravenes U.S. policy and the 
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the 
Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which the United States 
ratified in 2002. The United States has a moral obligation to avoid 
funding armed forces that use child soldiers. I am proud that with the 
passage of the TVPRA, we have taken an important step to try to stop 
this abhorrent practice.
  Finally, I want to highlight an important provision in the TVPRA that 
will crack down on foreign diplomats in the United States who abuse 
their domestic employees. At a Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee 
hearing I chaired in 2007 regarding human trafficking, we heard 
testimony from a distinguished human rights lawyer, Martina Vandenberg, 
who represents several trafficking victims in lawsuits against their 
traffickers. Due to the doctrine of diplomatic immunity, a legal 
principle that exempts certain government officials from the 
jurisdiction of U.S. courts, Ms. Vandenberg indicated that such 
lawsuits are routinely dismissed.
  A July 2008 GAO report, which Senator Coburn and I requested, 
revealed that there have been 42 documented allegations in the United 
States of unlawful abuse, exploitation, or human trafficking by foreign 
diplomats with immunity since 2000, and that the Justice Department has 
opened 19 criminal investigations of foreign diplomats in the past 
three years alone. These are not isolated incidents.
  The TVPRA requires the Secretary of State to suspend the issuance of 
A-3 and G-5 visas--used for the hiring of non-U.S. citizens as domestic 
workers--with respect to foreign diplomats employed by a country or 
international organization that has a record of tolerating the abuse or 
exploitation of domestic workers. The act also prevents such visas from 
being issued or renewed unless the domestic worker meets personally 
with a U.S. consular official outside the presence of the employer to 
go over their employment rights and protections. And the act contains a 
robust reporting requirement that will help keep Congress informed 
about future incidents of abuse of A-3 and G-5 visa holders, as well as 
about options to ensure that victims receive appropriate compensation 
if their rights are violated but they are prevented from seeking a 
remedy in court due to the assertion of diplomatic immunity.
  Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. President-elect 
Barack Obama has called it ``a debasement of our common humanity.'' 
With the passage of the TVPRA--the fourth major antitrafficking bill 
passed by Congress in the past 8 years--Congress has once again 
exercised its moral leadership on one of the most urgent human rights 
challenges of our time.

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