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Secretary Pompeo

@SecPompeo

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The @StateDept

has undertaken a truly historic effort to bring #AmericansHome in the midst of this pandemic, and to provide aid to countries that need it, in the finest traditions of this great nation.

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Secretary Pompeo

@SecPompeo

Never in the Department’s 230-year history have we led a worldwide evacuation of such geographic scale and complexity. The U.S. has no higher duty than to protect the American people. I’ve never been more proud of how we’ve done that than I am today. https://go.usa.gov/xvrwq

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6:59 AM · Apr 2, 2020

https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1245712357424275456

Saudi Arabia launches mechanism to fight human trafficking

Kingdom forms partnership with global bodies to tackle problem

Saudi Arabia has launched its first mechanism to deal with human trafficking, providing government departments, law enforcement and civil society advice on how to deal with the issue.

The National Trafficking in Persons Referral Mechanism (NRM) was created in partnership with in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Organisation of Migration to define the roles and responsibilities of different state agencies.

“Human trafficking is an affront to the dignity of all humanity,” said Dr Awwad Alawwad, chair of Saudi Arabia’s National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking.

“It is our duty to eradicate this heinous practice and I am proud to report that the launch of the National Referral Mechanism is a major step to that end."

In 2015, the government launched a national human rights strategy bringing together government and non-government bodies to pass laws to meet UN resolutions and international treaty obligations on human right, following its ascension to the UN Human Rights Council in January 2014.

The NRM is the latest in a range of measures taken by the kingdom on trafficking as part of a three-year national action plan launched in 2017. As well as legal reform, the kingdom has donated to charities dedicated to migrants rights and reducing trafficking and ran awareness campaigns and training programmes for people who may come into contact with trafficked people to recognise signs and act appropriately.

It also set up a phone line operating in nine languages for people to report issues relating to trafficking. In 2018, the call centre received approximately 1.3 million "general enquiries and requests, labour disputes, employment complaints, and tips", the US State Department reported.

In 2018, the Human Rights Council recommended Saudi Arabia "adopt adequate mechanisms for the early identification and referral of victims of trafficking."

A copy of the new mechanism shown to The National meets the UN recommendations with a six-step process: identifying victims, saving and sheltering them, investigating and prosecuting culprits, protecting and assisting victims, voluntary repatriation and social reintegration.

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This process will bring in the country’s Ministry of Labour and Social Development, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Ministry of Media as well as a host of civil society organisations and the justice system.

The unveiling of the mechanism coincides with the launch of an anonymous digital reporting service online. The referral service will be expanded to include a 24/7 hotline and mobile application, both of which are currently under development.

“The launch of the NRM is a key milestone in the fight to combat trafficking in persons in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, said Mohamed El Zarkani, IOM Bahrain’s Chief of Mission.”

“We are working in harmony, simultaneously, with a leading UNODC program focusing on partnership, prosecution, and data management. The collaboration shows a welcome and timely step into international collaboration on the subject of trafficking.”

The US State Department’s 2019 Trafficking in Persons report recognised the steps Saudi Arabia was taking to address the problem in the region.

But it suggested that the kingdom should develop a referral system to better protect victims and increase investigations into human trafficking.

There was no official comment from the US on Saudi’s latest announcements or whether it would address these concerns.

Saudi Arabia has made a raft of reforms over the last few years as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 to modernise the country and accelerate economic development.

Human rights reforms included lifting the ban on women driving in June 2017, and 2019 changes to labour laws to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex, disability, or age.

Dr Awwad also promised further human rights reforms to “improve the quality of life of all citizens and residents of the Kingdom".

https://www.thenational.ae/world/gcc/saudi-arabia-launches-mechanism-to-fight-human-trafficking-1.999680

Sex trafficking poses the risk of spreading COVID-19 to thousands of people

Victims have no protection against the virus, nor do their clients.

By Rochelle Keyhan

12:00 AM on Mar 28, 2020

As a former prosecutor of sex traffickers, I know that the 79,000 victims in Texas born and raised in America are not protected against COVID-19, nor are their clients. This unchecked potential spread of the virus will be curbed by prosecution of sex traffickers, a far more difficult case to prove than simple prostitution.

Sex traffickers snag some 200,000 young people born and raised in the U.S. A good percentage are in Texas. Yet across all 18,000 U.S. cities with police departments, only 800 human trafficking cases are initiated each year, according to the 2019 State Department U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report.

Traffickers lure vulnerable youth at bus stops, outside schoolyards, sleeping in parks and even within foster homes. The traffickers offer companionship, food and a promise of stability. They addict kids to drugs and alcohol to keep them captive. They promise impoverished young women legitimate work, and then shame them with rape and hold them in abusive relationships.

I prosecuted nine male traffickers. Each made an average of $11,000 a month off the backs of their victims. The men I successfully prosecuted had forced a total of 34 young men and women into prostitution. The youths were 11 to 15 years old when first trafficked. Many died from drug overdoses before they were 30.

Few prosecutions of sex traffickers occur because traffickers jump state lines and there is no national human trafficking database. Most police departments lack the inter-state data that can identify a trafficking case versus the lesser crime of promoting prostitution in one’s own city. During my tenure as a prosecutor in Philadelphia, we brought charges against hundreds of sex buyers, and only a dozen cases against traffickers, leaving thousands of our nation’s children exploited, and sex traffickers free to set up business in adjoining states.

Sadly, there is little oversight of victims even if they reach out for help. Last year the federal National Human Trafficking Hotline logged 14,000 calls from victims. Many callers were referred to agencies that potentially could help, but we have no data that confirms they did. The hotline has no follow-through component, no feedback loop that makes sure a social worker checks on the caller after a referral, and no check-ins with agencies to see if the caller was indeed served.

Many referral agencies are overwhelmed and understaffed. Was their line busy when the victim called? Was a bed available for the caller, or for more than one paid night in a hotel as a transitional escape? Did the caller leave a name? Few callers have a home address or a phone that isn’t monitored by the trafficker.

Here’s what we should do with more funding proposed, but not yet delivered by the Trump administration:

· Add feedback loops to the national hotline that checks on whether a referral resulted in help. Circle back to the caller, if possible, to see what more is needed to escape the trafficker. It takes courage to make the call, and often at great risk.

· Enable collaborative data among police departments that can help prosecutors convict traffickers that work across state lines. I share my prosecutorial experience with 204 city police departments across 37 U.S. states. Sharing data in a national databank needs to be part of a federally funded effort.

· Allocate resources to keep impoverished young women and men from succumbing to traffickers by providing more safe housing for runaways. If we can quickly build extra testing and hospitals for a virus threat, surely we can build more safe housing for victims of sex traffickers seeking escape.

· Encourage far better oversight of foster homes. Traffickers sometimes place their young victims in a foster home to recruit other kids in the house, so it’s important to have trained social workers interview placements.

· Fund more social workers charged with protecting impoverished or homeless youth so kids sleeping in parks can be spared the trauma of trafficking in order to eat.

We need to understand that with quick contagion of COVID-19, a sex trafficker creates a conduit to infecting thousands of Americans. With more citizens experiencing the fall-out of the virus — less paid work and more housing instability — the risk for exploitation increases. We need to put federal funds to better use to stop and lock up more traffickers.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/03/28/sex-trafficking-poses-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-19-to-thousands-of-people/

“This is done now under the bright lights of everything”.

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