Release of 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report
Opinion Editorial
Ambassador Mark C. Minton

In every country around the world, including the United States, there is evidence of trafficking in human beings.  Men, women, and children are held in domestic servitude, exploited for commercial sex, forcibly recruited as child soldiers, or abused in factories and sweatshops.  These forms of human trafficking are, in fact, modern-day slavery.

This year, America commemorates the bicentennial of the outlawing of the transatlantic slave trade.  The same lie which underpinned the transatlantic slave trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, namely that some people are less than human, is the very lie that fuels human trafficking.

Trafficking continues to be a problem in Mongolia, although it remains difficult to quantify. The press and local NGOs report that Mongolian women and girls are trafficked to nearby countries for both forced labor and sexual exploitation.  Within Mongolia, there have been reports of Mongolian women and girls being kidnapped and forced to work in the commercial sex trade.  Meanwhile, some Mongolian men are trafficked abroad for labor exploitation.  I salute the people and Government of Mongolia for recognizing that the trafficking problem exists in Mongolia, and for taking positive steps to address this problem.  We encourage Mongolian authorities to continue efforts to prevent trafficking and to make more effective use of existing laws against trafficking to prosecute and convict more traffickers as well as to improve protection and support for the victims of trafficking.  The United States supports you in this effort. 

Those who commit or facilitate the crime of trafficking in persons—including fraudulent recruiters, exploitative employers, and corrupt government officials—must be held to account.  In the last five years, over 100 countries have passed new laws or amended existing law to toughen penalties for human trafficking.  Thousands of criminals around the world are now prosecuted when, just five years ago, only a handful wound up in jail.

One of the central aims of U.S. foreign policy—promoting democracy and just governance— seeks to encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.   Our commitment to building anti-trafficking capacity and cooperation between nations is evidenced by $528 million in international programmatic assistance since 2001.

On June 5, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice released our 8th annual Trafficking in Persons Report to raise the level of awareness and to stimulate action to address this crime.