Monday, June 23, 2008

National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum Releases New Study on Trafficking



From the NAPAWF:

The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum
(NAPAWF) recently released, *Rights to Survival & Mobility: An Anti-Trafficking Activist's Agenda*, a new report highlighting the disproportionate impact of human trafficking on Asian and Pacific Islander women and girls. Human trafficking is the third most profitable underground enterprise, rivaling the drug and arms trade. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that the largest group of persons trafficked into the U.S. are from East Asia and the Pacific.

"This is an extremely critical time to discuss the impact of human
trafficking on API communities, especially in light of the pending reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act," says NAPAWF's Anti-Trafficking Project Director, Liezl Tomas Rebugio. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, HR 3887, offers extended protections for foreign domestic workers but also attempts to transform anti-trafficking legislation to prostitution legislation. Specifically, HR 3887 expands the Mann Act--a federal law that prohibits the transportation of persons across state lines for the purpose of prostitution--to include prostitution activity within states, and calls prostitution "sex trafficking". Essentially, this creates a new federal prostitution crime and identifies all prostitution as "sex trafficking", even if *force, fraud or coercion* is not present.

This limited approach to human trafficking is a strategy that NAPAWF is
highly critical of. *Rights to Survival & Mobility* broadens the discourse on human trafficking to include root causes, such as poverty, gender-based discrimination, globalization and militarism. Furthermore, NAPAWF links the anti-trafficking movement with other social justice movements such as worker's rights, reproductive justice, racial justice, women's rights and human rights.

Download the report here

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