Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act Passes House

Written on: May 20, 2015

This is one of the success stories that gives energy to advocacy work. Thanks for all you do!

May 19, 2015

It is with great pleasure we report that the Senate package of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking S. 178 (JVTA) has passed the House of Representatives (420-3)!

The JVTA is a comprehensive piece of legislation designed to fight and prevent human trafficking in the United States. The bill will provide critical funding so that child victims of trafficking can get the services they need to heal and law enforcement can receive training that will strengthen their response to this horrific crime. The whole package includes other top ECPAT-USA priorities, including a provision that will hold people who buy and exploit children accountable for the harm they cause, language that recognizes that child victims of trafficking should be considered victims of child abuse, and the creation of a Survivor Council.

We are so thankful to our federal partners, and the original bill sponsors, Representatives Ted Poe (R-TX) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) for their commitment to this bill and making sure that vulnerable children have a voice in Congress. This landmark bill also represents many years of hard work and advocacy from ALL OF YOU, and we could not have gotten this far without your dedication. We would like to especially recognize our Code of Conduct partners including the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE), CorpTrav Management Group, and the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA); the students from St. Joseph High School in Brooklyn; and all of our allies who wrote letters and called their representatives to demand they pass this bill.

Moving forward, we eagerly await the bill to be signed into law by President Obama. Follow ECPAT-USA on  Facebook and Twitter for updates on the next steps of the process.

Sincerely,

Carol Smolenski

ECPAT-USA

Learn more about Human Trafficking on our website.

This entry was posted in With a Heart for Justice and tagged: April, Child Victims, Human Trafficking, Justice for Victims of Human Trafficking, JVTA, law, legislation, President Obama, Survivor Council