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Senate Supports Human Trafficking Awareness

On June 22, the Senate approved, by unanimous consent, a resolution (S. Con. Res. 40) supporting the goals of the annual National Day of Human Trafficking Awareness, January 11, a day dedicated to raising awareness of, and opposition to, human trafficking.

Sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the resolution makes a number of findings, including:

  • there is a national imperative to eliminate human trafficking, including early or forced marriage, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, labor obtained through debt bondage, involuntary servitude, slavery, and slavery by descent;
  • victims of human trafficking need support in order to escape and to recover from the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual trauma associated with their victimization;
  • human traffickers use many physical and psychological techniques to control their victims, including the use of violence or threats of violence against the victim or the victim’s family, isolation from the public, isolation from the victim’s family and religious or ethnic communities, language and cultural barriers, shame, control of the victim’s possessions, confiscation of passports and other identification documents, and threats of arrest, deportation, or imprisonment if the victim attempts to reach out for assistance or to leave; and
  • although laws to prosecute perpetrators of human trafficking and to assist and protect victims of human trafficking have been enacted in the United States, awareness of the issues surrounding human trafficking by those people most likely to come into contact with victims is essential for effective enforcement because the techniques that traffickers use to keep their victims enslaved severely limit self-reporting.