On April 29, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations held a hearing, “Effective Accountability: Tier Ranking in the Fight Against Human Trafficking.”
The Honorable Mark Lagon, former ambassador-at-large for Trafficking in Persons, Department of State, expressed his concerns about countries that he believes merit close scrutiny in the 2014 Trafficking in Persons report (TIP Report) and praised countries or regions that have made strides in preventing human trafficking: “In Europe, one would assume that anti-trafficking efforts were robust. That is largely the case, relative to the developing world. Yet, is a new European Union (EU) directive to combat human trafficking being implemented in individual EU countries? And there remains a problem of demand for sex trafficking. Especially in those countries, like the Netherlands and Germany, where sex buying is not criminalized or stigmatized, [the] commercial sex sector becomes the enabling environment for sex trafficking of minors and of adults through force, fraud, and coercion. The model in Germany has manifestly failed. As a result, more and more European countries, including France, Ireland, Finland, and the [United Kingdom] are contemplating the adoption of the Nordic model, which makes it a crime to buy, but not sell, sexual services. In addition, last month, the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in favor of criminalizing the purchase of sex, putting pressure on those countries that have adopted the German model. How meaningful can the anti-demand efforts of nations (which the TVPA [Trafficking Victims Protection Act (P.L. 113-4)] minimum standards require the TIP Report to account for) be if sex buying is legal and, frankly, encouraged as a tourist industry by the Dutch, German, and other governments?”
The following witnesses also testified during the hearing:
