Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

Improving protection for women in conflict situations
and for refugee women and girls and ensuring
that humanitarian programs focus on their needs and
concerns are U.S. government goals. In Fiscal Year
2003, the U.S. Department of State provided over $4
million of its contributions to the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for women
and children’s special programming. In addition, it
gave more than $2 million to UNHCR and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) for genderbased
violence-prevention programs. The article
“Building Peace in War-Torn Countries” points out
that since 2002, the United States has provided some
$10 million to NGOs for programs that focus on
prevention and response to rape, sexual exploitation,
domestic violence, and more. In over 15 conflict areas
where women are at risk—including East Timor,
Eritrea, Kosovo, Liberia, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, and
Uganda—NGO grantees on the ground provide
counseling, health care, and legal aid to victims of violence;
they teach girls how to resist sexual exploitation;
and they educate entire communities about preventing
domestic abuse.
Among the forms of violence against women the
United States is fighting both domestically and internationally
are the rise in trafficking in persons and the
harmful practice of female genital cutting, which is
spreading through immigration to more countries.
The United States has sought to renew the world’s
attention to these scourges, allocating additional
resources to eliminate them.
Trafficking in Persons:
A Human Rights Concern
Human trafficking is first and foremost a grave
violation of human rights. It inflicts unspeakable physical
and psychological damage on its victims, primarily
women and children, and it feeds growing global
health problems, such as sexually transmitted diseases
and HIV/AIDS. It also fuels organized crime, undermining
the safety and security of communities
throughout the world.
Emphasizing the U.S. commitment to ending this
plague, President Bush brought international attention
to trafficking in persons during his 2003 U.N.
General Assembly address. He announced the launch
of a $50-million U.S. anti-trafficking initiative. “We
must show new energy in fighting back an old evil,” he
said. “Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the
transatlantic slave trade, and more than a century after
slavery was officially ended in its last strongholds, the
trade in human beings for any purpose must not be
allowed to thrive in our time.” In June 2004, the
Department of State announced that the recipients for
the president’s new anti-trafficking initiative would be
Brazil, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova,
Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.
The Bush administration has provided more than
$295 million to support anti-trafficking programs in
more than 120 countries. This funding helps countries
to develop laws, create special law enforcement units to
investigate cases, rescue victims, build emergency shelters,
conduct voluntary repatriation for displaced victims,
run information and awareness campaigns, and
create long-term rehabilitation and vocational training
programs.
As the president mentioned in his U.N. address,
state-sanctioned ownership of human beings ended
early in the 20th century. However, each year an estimated
600,000 to 800,000 people are illegally trafficked
as slaves across international borders. Millions
more are trafficked within the borders of their own
countries. Estimates of the total number of victims of
trafficking reach the millions.
According to Ambassador John R. Miller, senior
advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State and director of
the State Department’s Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. data find that 80
percent of the trafficked persons are female and up to
50 percent are children. “Sex slavery ... is the dominant
form,” he noted, “then domestic servitude, both of
which are largely women or girls. What was once a
race issue has become primarily a gender issue.”
Ambassador Miller feels “a corner has been
turned” in increasing global attention to this problem.
He called the 8,000 or so prosecutions and 2,800 convictions
worldwide in 2003 an “enormous” increase.
And he pointed to a number of U.N. protocols and
other international covenants calling for the abolition
of trafficking in persons.
In the United States, rising awareness of this
modern-day form of slavery and its consequences also
has intensified advocacy by faith-based and human
rights nongovernmental organizations. Coupled with
data that showed the United States was a growing destination
for victims, advocacy efforts led to passage of
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in
2000, and amendments that strengthened it in 2003.
Among its most significant provisions are protections
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