[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Page 18296]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      TRIBUTE TO NANCY KASSEBAUM BAKER AND AMBASSADOR HOWARD BAKER

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I welcome this opportunity to pay tribute 
to our former Senate colleagues, Nancy Kassebaum Baker and Ambassador 
Howard Baker, for their leadership in organizing a regional conference 
in Tokyo on ``strategies for combating human trafficking in Asia.'' 
Together, they led the U.S. Embassy's effort to bring together 
government officials, nongovernmental organizations and multilateral 
organizations in a 2-day conference in June on the most effective ways 
to deal with the global scourge of human trafficking. The conference 
was cosponsored by the Vital Voices Global Partnership and the 
International Labor Organization.
  The conference took place several days after the publication of the 
State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report. Japan and 
other countries were placed on the ``watch list'' for not fully 
complying with minimum standards for the elimination of human 
trafficking. Officials from the National Policy Agency of Japan and the 
Justice Ministry participated in the conference, and several high level 
officials were among the keynote speakers. Japan announced that it has 
established an inter-ministerial body to address the challenge through 
a number of actions, including drafting new legislation to strengthen 
existing rules and penalties. Representatives from many other countries 
including India, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Russia, and 
Colombia, also participated in the conference, as did U.S. Government 
officials.
  Each year, at least 1 million human beings, predominantly women and 
children, are shipped across national boundaries and sold into what has 
become modern-day slavery. Traffickers use fraud, coercion and outright 
kidnapping to obtain their victims. No country is immune from this 
problem. Both the United States and Japan are destination countries. 
Such trafficking is a flourishing criminal industry, second only to 
criminal drug and arms trafficking. Human trafficking is an urgent 
global challenge and progress against it is possible only through 
international cooperation.
  As Ambassador Baker said in opening the meeting: ``I hope the ideas 
that come out of this conference help victims all over the world.'' I 
commend our two former Senate colleagues for convening this significant 
conference to raise international awareness of human trafficking and 
for bringing countries together to exchange best practices and develop 
effective strategies to combat it. Their leadership is an excellent 
example of our Nation's commitment to address this global scourge.

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