By Nathnael Mengistie
According to the International Labor Organization, human trafficking is the act of controlling or exploiting a person for sex, labor, or other services through fraud, force, or coercion. This grave human rights violation affected an estimated 20.9 million or more individuals worldwide in 2016. In recent years, however, numerous countries, including the United States, have passed different laws to combat this issue. In fact, on January 9th 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), a law that aims to prevent human trafficking, protect victims, and punish offenders not only in the US, but also abroad. This legislation was first passed in 2000 and has since been expanded and reauthorized numerous times. This landmark anti-trafficking law formed the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which publishes a yearly Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP), and it also established the T-visa, which allows trafficking victims who came from outside the US to become permanent residents. Furthermore, the current administration has also authorized $430 million to fight human trafficking and passed additional laws, such as the Abolish Human Trafficking Act, which increases the prosecution of traffickers. Although these efforts are certainly commendable, American law regarding human trafficking still focuses on prosecution and fails to recognize the importance of a victim-centered approach to end this heinous crime. In fact, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stated that there was a 41% increase in the number of prosecutions for human trafficking offenses from 2011 to 2015, which illustrates the government’s focus on the criminal justice aspect of human trafficking. Although it is important to prosecute traffickers, members of the anti-trafficking movement should also focus on identifying human trafficking victims and providing long term support to human trafficking survivors. One of the reasons why this is not the case is because it is challenging to identify trafficking victims due to the obscure nature of the crime. Nevertheless, framing human trafficking as a public health issue and increasing the involvement of healthcare professionals will not only allow us to identify trafficking victims and empower survivors, but also help us address the socio-economic determinants that facilitate human trafficking by working with policy makers, clinical professionals, law enforcement, and educators because human trafficking is a multifaceted problem. By using a public health approach to combat human trafficking and collaborating with different professionals, we are increasing our scope and our reach because public health is concerned with the well-being of entire populations and not just specific individuals.
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