AMBASSADOR DYER: Good morning, everyone. And welcome. My name is Cindy Dyer. I'm the Ambassador-At-Large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons here at the Department of State. And I have the honor of kicking off today's ceremony. Thank you all so much for joining us.
I know it has been a few years since we could gather such a crowd in person for this ceremony, and it is such a pleasure to see so many friends and colleagues. I'm especially excited that three of my predecessors are here, Ambassadors Luis CdeBaca, Susan Coppedge, and John Richmond.
Today's program will consist of the following. First, Secretary Blinken will offer remarks on this year's report. Then we will honor eight outstanding Trafficking In Persons Report Heroes for their extraordinary dedication to combatting human trafficking. We will also hear briefly from one of the heroes who will speak on behalf of this year's honorees. Finally, I will offer my own closing remarks. After the ceremony, we hope you will find some time to visit state.gov to access this year's report online.
We are so grateful to you, Secretary Blinken, for joining us today to release the 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report. Thank you for your continuous work elevating the issue of human trafficking in your meetings around the world and here at home, as well as chairing the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. We are proud to serve under your leadership as we all work together to advance efforts to combat human trafficking.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (Applause.)
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And just to reiterate what Cindy said, it is so wonderful to see you all here at the State Department.
Today, the State Department is releasing the 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report. This report provides a comprehensive, objective assessment of 188 countries and territories - including the United States. Its purpose is to showcase successful efforts to prevent trafficking, to identify areas where countries are falling short and have more work to do, and ultimately - ultimately - to eliminate trafficking altogether.
The United States is committed to combatting human trafficking because it represents an attack on human rights and freedoms. It violates the universal right of every person to have autonomy over their own life and actions. Today, more than 27 million people around the world are denied that right.
Trafficking harms our societies: weakening the rule of law, corrupting supply chains, exploiting workers, fueling violence. And it disproportionately impacts traditionally marginalized groups: women, LGBTQI+ individuals, persons with disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities.
In his first year in office, President Biden released an updated National Action Plan to ensure that our policy response is keeping pace with what is an evolving challenge. Earlier this year, as the ambassador noted, I chaired a meeting of the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, where we reviewed steps that we've taken to implement the plan: prohibiting the importation of goods made with forced labor; imposing financial sanctions on those that knowingly profit from that labor; integrating racial equity into our antitrafficking work; strengthening our efforts to counter online sexual exploitation and abuse of children.
The TIP Report is a central part of the United States Government's antitrafficking work, and it reflects the efforts of so many people in this room today - and countless others both in Washington and around the world.
And that starts with the leadership of Ambassador Dyer and her team at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, as well as colleagues that we have in our embassies around the world, whose work to interview survivors, to gather information, to conduct factchecking is at the very foundation of the report. Bipartisan efforts in Congress, where there is an ironclad commitment and strong partnership to end trafficking - including Representative Chris Smith, who's been a longtime champion and who's here with us today, and I thank you for your presence and thank you for your leadership over so many years. And members of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking and the Human Trafficking Expert Consultant Network - their insights, their ideas are indispensable to shaping and evaluating our policy and programs.
And maybe most significantly, most importantly, we're grateful to the survivors whose courage, whose resilience, and whose perspectives inspire and inform all of our work.
Finally, a very warm welcome to our eight TIP Report Heroes who are with us today - you'll hear a little bit more about them shortly - journalists, activists, prosecutors, lawmakers, each of whom shares a commitment to stopping trafficking in all of its forms.
This year's report shows a picture of steady progress around the world, with dozens of countries making significant strides in preventing trafficking, in protecting survivors, in prosecuting those who carry out this crime.
In Seychelles, the national government offered enhanced training to airport staff and police officers to better spot trafficking. The government also instituted new policies to screen vulnerable populations, like migrants at transit points, for trafficking indicators. That's helped them identify more victims than ever before and convict a record number of traffickers.
Hong Kong launched a new hotline to help trafficking victims report fraudulent overseas employment scams and to get help. In its first month, that hotline received hundreds of calls, leading to several investigations.
In Denmark, authorities led a renewed focus on - and committed additional resources to - combatting human trafficking, identifying more victims, prosecuting and convicting more traffickers.
So that's the good news, and these are just examples of it. The report also highlights a number of concerning trends.
The first is the continued expansion of forced labor. As the pandemic disrupted supply chains around the world and spiked demand in certain industries, like PPE production, exploitative employers used a host of tactics to take advantage of lower-paid and more vulnerable workers.
The second is the rise in labor trafficking using online scams, which have proliferated as more of the world gains access to the internet. The pandemic supercharged this trend. Traffickers capitalized on widespread unemployment to recruit victims with fake job listings and then forced them to run international scams.
Third, the report exposes the risks facing an often-overlooked segment of trafficking victims: boys and young men. According to a recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, between 2004 and 2020 the percentage of boys identified as victims of human trafficking rose five-fold.
Now for years, there's been a widely held - but incorrect - belief that trafficking affects exclusively female victims. This false perception has had some, quite frankly, devastating and tangible consequences, with far few support services typically allocated to male victims of trafficking.
The reality is that any person, regardless of sex, regardless of gender identity, can be targeted by human traffickers. And so governments, civil society, the private sector - all of us have to develop resources for all populations, including male victims.
When President Biden released his National Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, he said, and I quote, "We can accomplish far more working in partnership than we [can] working alone." That's true for the work between governments, between the federal and local officials, and with and between civil society and the private sector.
We see that in North Macedonia, where the government partnered with social workers, with NGO staff, with psychologists, with law enforcement to launch mobile teams that identify the majority of trafficking victims in the country. This program has been so effective that several other countries in the Balkans either plan to, or already have, implemented the very same model.
We see it in the work of the Issara Institute. That's an NGO that's worked hand-in-hand with private sector to help hundreds of thousands of workers learn about their rights and seek remediation when labor abuses occur.
We see it in Argentina, where leaders from the federal government regularly meet with representatives from across the country's 24 jurisdictions, to coordinate their efforts and raise one another's ambition, including by committing to offer long-term housing to survivors of trafficking.
For an issue that's as complex and as constantly evolving as this one, we simply need all hands on deck. We need law enforcement working to prosecute traffickers. We need social workers providing trauma-informed care to the victims. We need advocates holding governments accountable. We need communities coming together to support the survivors. In many ways, this room reflects that need and reflects that community.
We are so grateful to you for the partnership that you've shown, sharing expertise, sharing ideas, building and strengthening networks with us. And what I want to share with you today is simply this: the United States is committed to standing with you, and once and for all, ending human trafficking.
Thank you all very much. Cindy, back to you. (Applause.)
