USA releases action plan to combat human trafficking

WASHINGTON, United State – President Joe Biden today signed the updated National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking.  

The National Action Plan, according to Department Spokesman, Ned Price  outlines a three-year comprehensive approach to combat human trafficking, including actions to strengthen prosecution of traffickers, enhance victim protections, and prevent the crime from occurring within our borders and abroad.

The updated National Action Plan integrates the Administration’s core commitments to addressing the needs of underserved individuals, families, and communities – including by advancing racial and gender equity; furthering workers’ rights; preventing forced labor in global supply chains; and ensuring safe, orderly, and humane migration.

 First launched in 2020, the National Action Plan’s updates build on the foundational pillars of U.S. and global anti-trafficking efforts – prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnership.

Secretary Anthony Blinken chairs the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF), a cabinet-level entity created by statute in 2000 to coordinate U.S. government-wide efforts to combat trafficking in persons.

 The PITF, which consists of 20 federal agencies, serves as a forum for collaborating on implementation of the National Action Plan’s priority actions.  PITF agencies are already taking concrete steps to implement key aspects of the updated National Action Plan, including forming two working groups — one to develop best practices in implementing screening forms and protocols and the second to analyze rights and protections granted to certain temporary visa holders.

The National Action Plan highlights several critical ways the Department of State combats human trafficking.  It calls for collaboration between the Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and other federal and local law enforcement agencies to continue building our collective capacity to pursue human trafficking cases and promptly connect victims to services.

  It also reinforces the urgency of the Department’s ongoing work to engage governments, including across our own interagency, and with the private sector to prevent and address forced labor in global supply chains and public procurement. 

Most importantly, the National Action Plan underscores the need to further enhance the US ability to ensure  anti-trafficking work is trauma- and survivor-informed, which the Department is committed to doing through its engagement with the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking and support of the Human Trafficking Expert Consultant Network.