 I'd like to welcome everyone to the January 2021 conversation series on how to sustain hope in the anti-trafficking movement. Now hope is the fuel that drives action and action is essential if we're to make progress. My name is John Richmond and I currently serve as the United States Ambassador at large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons. Today's conversation is incredibly special to me because it'll be a conversation with my three predecessors. So you'll have four ambassadors appointed by three different presidents who served over the last 14 years to ask your questions to. You know the four of us have known each other for a long time and I have been incredibly grateful to each of them for their wisdom and counsel to me over the years. We're talking to them today to get their collective thoughts on how we can continue to move forward in the anti-trafficking movement both at a domestic level within the United States but also internationally at a global level. It's also a great sign of continuity within this space. The anti-trafficking movement has long enjoyed some rare political real estate and that it's had champions on both sides of the political aisle and we've all worked really hard to maintain a bipartisan consensus. Well this is not just going to be a four-way conversation. We want to hear your thoughts and questions from everyone who's watching out there today. Thank you for joining. We'll answer your questions. Put them in the chat space and as time allows we'll get to them. Now I'm going to briefly introduce our distinguished panelists for this conversation. I'll do it in chronological order in their order of service and I'll start with Ambassador Mark Lagann who served from 2007 to 2009 and prior to leading the Trafficking in Persons Office Mark served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations. He's also served on the Republican Staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which is the Trafficking in Persons Office Committee of Jurisdiction. Mark currently serves as the Chief Policy Officer at Friends of the Global Fight Against Aid to Berkulosis and Malaria as well as being a distinguished senior scholar at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. So welcome Mark and thanks for joining today. Mark I think you're on mute. Delighted to be with you. Next I want to introduce Ambassador Luis Cedebaca who served from 2009 to 2015 the longest serving Trafficking in Persons Ambassador before joining the Department of State Lou served as Council to the Congressional House Committee on the Judiciary. He also served as a Federal Prosecutor in the Department of Justice which is where I first met him and we became friends back in 2006 when I joined DOJ. Lou is currently the Director of Justice Programs at Chambers Lopez Strategies. He's also a Senior Fellow at the Yale University Gilder-Lairman Center for the Study of Slavery and the Abolition of Slavery and is a visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School. So Lou welcome and thank you for joining us today. Great to be here thanks for having me John. And lastly we're grateful to have with us my most immediate predecessor Ambassador Susan Coppidge who was nominated by President Obama and served from 2015 to 2017. Susan previously served 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia. She's also served as the Office's Human Trafficking Coordinator and trained law enforcement. She's worked extensively with anti-trafficking NGOs. Susan is presently Council at Carvelin and Horst and serves on the boards of Polaris as well as Street Grace. So welcome Susan and thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having all of us John and I'm really looking forward to the conversation. You know for all our participants watching online we encourage you to leave your questions and comments in the chat space on the page. You're an important part of this discussion and we want to hear your thoughts. I also want to let you know that I've invited each of our panelists to engaging constructive interruptions. I'd love for this to have a feel of a dinner table conversation where we interrupt to clarify and to add value not to be rude but we want to have a real discussion and not just a series of presentations. I want to start off though if I could that our discussion today by asking each of our panelists a simple question. What is one of the key inflection points or what are the points of change that occurred during your respective term as Ambassador at the Trafficking and Persons Office and why don't I we'll go chronologically and start with Ambassador Lagont. Mark, well any key inflection points that come to mind for you? Sure, two come to mind. One is that during my tenure the community the human trafficking field the voices for the voices were focusing much more on labor trafficking so that the primary and sole focus was not the very dire problem of sex trafficking only and the phenomenon of looking at migrant labor in the Gulf and the long-standing child labor and forced labor problems in the world heavily in South Asia began to be reflected and the global report that the State Department puts out began to break down the statistics for victims found for prosecutions and for convictions by sex trafficking and labor trafficking ensuring just the remarkable posity of action on labor trafficking but really the inflection point had to do with cooperation with Capitol Hill and Lou is a DOJ prosecutor with a great history on this but he at the time was at the Judiciary Committee in the House. The reauthorization the third reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act the 2008 Wilbur Force Act was pulled together during my tenure and it had very important innovations. It ended the possibility for country staying in perpetuity on the tier two watch list with a time limit. It indicated that something in the previous reauthorization in 2005 calling upon the Department of Labor to put out a list of goods tainted by child labor and forced labor that actually come out. Then Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao refused to take action on that absent funding provided by Congress. The 2008 Wilbur Force Act said we really mean it and I have to say despite my guidance from the Legislative Affairs Bureau I spoke pretty frankly candidly and openly with Capitol Hill about what we could use hopefully with some tools that Lou picked. I can testify to that because I remember being in the Longworth cafeteria and getting a call from Mark Lagann doing exactly that. I think we have a picture of when President Bush signed the Wilbur Force Act. It was an interesting moment in the Oval Office because it was the last month of the Bush administration and a giant financial crisis was going on but it was a real sign in a moment of transition of the robust bipartisanship on this essential issue of fighting modern slavery. That 2008 reauthorization was tremendous and gave lots of new tools particularly lowering the standard from knowing the means of coercion to knowing or in reckless disregard of the means of coercion and that made a big difference in several of the cases I was working on at the time and lowering that burden of proof allowed a lot of new opportunities for us to focus on forced labor cases. Thanks Mark. Let me shift to Susan. Susan when you think about actually I'm sorry I'm going in the right order here. Lou let me shift to you. Lou when you're thinking about your five years five plus years as Ambassador what comes to mind for you as inflection points? Well it was five years yeah so there's plenty of things that we did. I do want to start off one of the inflection points that I think has been really important for the office was Kerry Johnson joining us as the deputy and I definitely want to give that a shout out. Dan Kennelly who had worked with Mark went over to the protocol office Kerry came in and Kerry is just a diplomat's diplomat and I really feel like the things that we have accomplished since she came in couldn't have been done without her whether it's in her leadership when she's acting which has been several times now when she's been in the acting directorship or otherwise so that is a huge inflection point for the office. But I also think that one of the things and it kind of flows out of doing the US ranking for the first time and you know really looking at I will always defend the US ranking and and where it is I know that there are people who raise an eyebrow here and there but I think that if you look at at the US narrative you see what the United States is doing even if imperfect is in comparison to most countries in the world at a different level. That said you know a tier one is kind of like a gentleman's C nobody is doing a or a plus work on fighting human trafficking. But one of the things that we saw I think that when we started doing the US ranking was the need for a systemic and structural response the idea of you know victim care the idea of individual prosecutions all the things that Susan you and Ambassador Richmond and I had done as prosecutors you know that that wasn't going to make the kind of leap that we needed to and so what we were seeing was I think building out on some of those initial business linkages that Mark had made during his tenure we started seeing that maybe what we needed to do was less CSR and more regulatory pressure and so the regulatory pressure of the President Obama's executive order 1367 on government procurement the State Department procurement bulletin working with Senator Wyden on the tariff act but then also going over and working with the Brits on the UK modern slavery act which put a little bit of teeth and advanced the ball in what California supply chain transparency had done. That was all of a part with some of the innovation things that we were trying to do through programming whether it was programming with tech tools like the slavery footprint they and linkages the early work that I think blossomed under Ambassador Coppidge to the Global Fund and Modern Slavery you know really trying to think about how we ended up looking innovatively. The other big inflection point that I want to point out is the what we call the Wilberforce pamphlet it's something that Mark fought for it's something that I fought for up on the hill and it's something that the groups fought for because they were hearing and seeing from their clients and from the survivors that people were coming over with no clue as to how to name what was happening to them. They knew something was wrong but they didn't really have a name for it and they certainly didn't have any expectations that the government would help them and so that pamphlet which we developed in my tenure and were able to get out to the consular officers which was supposed to and was really driven by the problem of diplomats and domestic servants but the way that we ended up doing it it now protects folks in J1, H1, H2 all of the different guest worker categories and to the degree that we can differentiate our guest worker system from the kafala system which it's a matter of degree I think one of the things that that gives us hope is that people are escaping with that pamphlet in their hands and going to law enforcement because they know because of what we've done in the TIP office that they can end up finding socor in the United States. The last thing I think is not going to be as surprised anybody that knows me it's the slavery focus. The cross border centrifugal force of old white anti you know quote-unquote white slave trafficking sex trafficking regimes from the 1800s lives on and is very very powerful and the focus that we have brought I think from the office has been that slavery focus that freedom focus or involuntary servitude focus regardless of whether it's sex or labor trafficking and I think that we certainly saw that with President Obama's in you know six weeks out from a presidential election giving a major speech about slavery and its legacies on the 150th anniversary of emancipation over the objections of some of his political advisors because at the end of the day fighting slavery is what we do as Americans and I'm glad to be able to have done it with you the three of you. Yeah it's I echo your thoughts about Kerry Johnstone who will actually be acting director again next week so we're so thankful for her consistency as we all shuttle in and out of this work and also echo your thoughts about that pamphlet the Wilberforce pamphlet I think a lot of people might minimize that and think why are we talking about a pamphlet from so many years ago but I know personally it had a huge impact I met many victims who reached out to law enforcement and got help because of that pamphlet itself one in particular that I remember in Texas that I when I interviewed the survivor she explained that she had gotten that pamphlet tucked it in her waistband so that the trafficker wouldn't find it and then once she got to the United States use that pamphlet to reach out and get help so that pamphlet made a huge a huge impact I want to shift now to Susan Susan when you think about your tenure at the trafficking person's office in your time as an ambassador what inflection points come to mind for you well it's wonderful to have this continuum of of change and progress that we've heard about and that I was able to be a part of for a couple of years and the office had already started engaging in something that I was very excited about which were the child protection compacts the first one being in Ghana I think we have a picture of Dr. Kerry Johnstone being there for that and Jane Sigmund from the office but those child protection compacts were something different for the TIP office they were dedicated funds to engage government to government to fight trafficking so it required the partner government to have some skin in the game and the idea was to hopefully continue that after the funding and the state department left the program so while we've typically funded NGOs the child protection compacts were very exciting to me and I think we've also had some while I was there in Peru and the Philippines and then we continued with ones in Jamaica and Mongolia I think we have a picture from one of those as well I think Mongolia but those child protection compacts were very exciting and really moved the fight forward in those countries and had them focus on trafficking within their borders and the difference that governments can make so that was really important to me but also again started before I got there the first survivor advisory council was put in place and that was the first one that I know of globally and they were there to advise the US government and just the key role that survivors must have in this fight they must bring their experience and wisdom to our conversations about this I'm thrilled that street grace one of the organizations I serve on has a survivor advisory board and that the survivors at street grace picked up vacature as an issue vacature of criminal convictions for trafficking survivors as an issue to push in Georgia and also Polaris has their first board member that is a survivor so that discussion continues we need to continue to ask foreign governments to engage survivors in their conversation so those were the two things that were really impactful for me and then we did push vacature on a national level here many states started passing laws recognizing that trafficking victims should not be criminalized for what happened to them as a direct result of trafficking so those three areas were really inflection turning points for the movement and because I was the shepherd at that time of the office it was really exciting for me to get to work on this absolutely yeah I've been consistently worried that you're more likely to get arrested as a human trafficking victim than as a trafficker yeah you know our emphasis on non-prosecution has has continued and it needs to continue in the future we have not lived up to that to that mandate and I really appreciate all your work on the survivor advisory council I the advisory council has meant a ton to me and I've learned so much from them and we just got three new members appointed in the past few weeks so we're really excited that it's continuing on OSCE is developing an advisory council a whole lot of other NGOs have developed them and it really comes following on the US advisory council's example and one that just to show just to show the interconnectedness and the small circle of the anti-trafficking movement and many of you on this call one of the first survivors from one of the cases I prosecuted here in Atlanta was a college student who had been trafficked and she went out and started a non-profit organization in California and she now serves on the survivor advisory board so just really wonderful to see those things come around and to see the impact that survivors can have yeah no that's tremendous that's tremendous one thing that strikes me is that how much things build on each other I think everything that we've done over the last few years is really stands on the shoulders of what you all started or move forward certainly around the emphasis on forced labor you know we've continued to make that a priority and try to get more forced labor more focus on that you know where we have seen some unique progress in that I think is around supply chains whether it's the federal acquisition right rule the FAR and our procurement issues the withhold release orders out of Department of Homeland Security new investigations around criminal behavior in forced labor and supply chains I think businesses are starting to feel the incentives of why it's going to be important for them to make sure they're vetting their supply chains in a new way and that certainly happened over the last few years now we've also put a big emphasis on measurement and think about how do we advance beyond measuring activities and start measuring impact figuring out what interventions are effective and which ones need to be reformed and that's been something that we've been excited about and I think the fruit of that work will come in the in the next several years Lou mentioned the kafala system that's something that I've been so encouraged by you know there have been some real shifts in the way folks in the Gulf have begun to talk about the sponsorship system we've seen some reforms already a long way to go you know we don't want to be too laudatory about initial progress but we do want to celebrate incremental steps towards I want to commend you I want to commend you on that I think of you know visiting authorities in Saudi Arabia and in no country did I feel uh the smirk more from officials that they really didn't need to listen to us because they had the United States as an ally in their pocket and all of the other states in the region were watching for their you know their big brother in the region and that you know that dialogue has made made progress this is the continuity of the office you know I talked to the Indians about you know hey you can't let federalism prevent you from pushing for 1976 law on bonded labor to be implemented around um you know your states um and they said well you have a federal system you can't do this uh you know in your country and I said that there was the civil rights movement uh they weren't hearing then but methodical steps over the the longer tenure by the I think there's been a huge shift um rhetorically as well as in some some initial moves but it's part of a prevention strategy you know we know the kafal system doesn't cause forced labor but it's certainly a tool that um that employers or individuals who have domestic workers can wield to um to maintain their coercive scheme over people and as a preventative step it seems like a way to really target how traffickers are actually operating um so we've been really encouraged uh by that and you mentioned India during my my travels um which were curtailed on the front end by a long government shutdown and on the back end of my time with um a global pandemic and a complete global shutdown um got to travel to a number of different places around the world with the incredibly impressive and professional staff at the trafficking person's office but even in India got to meet with tip heroes that you all um gave tip hero awards to and hear their perspective and I think the continuity even within the tip hero program um and uh drawing upon them as a resource has been something that's been really encouraging to me you know I now want to shift to questions from um that that are coming in from people who are viewing us right now uh and get your thoughts on it I'll try to ask the question to one of you um but want to invite anyone or all of you to chime in and add your perspective or your insight so mark we'll start with you um and we got a question from Stephanie Olson right here at the State Department and here's your question do you think that we should move away from an emphasis on prosecution as a way to combat trafficking in persons and what's the most effective evidence-based approach mark of course this question assumes that there's been an emphasis on criminal prosecution which some may say the data doesn't support but I'd love to hear your thoughts because I've heard you discuss this in comparing it to a development approach and I know you've got I know you've thought deeply about this how would you respond to to Stephanie this is a great question um and in many ways um as the only person among the four of us who is not a prosecutor I've looked at we all look at this as a human rights issue but I you know later becoming head of freedom house I look at it particularly so um there is a you know there is a way that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Plermo Protocol are very heavily focused on the first P of prosecution and more of the you know um uh you know minimum standards are in that area but just as the broken down statistics of between sex trafficking and labor trafficking show there hasn't been enough progress that lots of countries around the world most countries around the world put in place laws uh to um you know address uh human trafficking in all of its forms um the rub is about the implementation and so I don't think we can get away from that my own view is that the protection P although I'm uncomfortable with saying protection of victims the empowerment of survivors is the moral and practical imperative and I think if we spent more time focusing on that not criminalizing um people for being migrants or for being in prostitution um if we stabilize survivors you'll actually promote more successful prosecutions as opposed to defining the only and best thing you can do for a survivor is uh to bring their perpetrator to justice um on the development question okay look uh this question asks uh by Stephanie Ellison ask a really good question about empirical evidence we need better empirical evidence uh in the field not only of the extent of the problem but of whether interventions we choose in policy work there is a latent idea that we ought to move away from a prosecution focused approach even away from the three Ps and have a diffuse approach to prevention uh it's a worthy idea to make sure that women migrants uh workers around the world minorities um have other economic opportunities to prosper so they don't uh make choices or get lured into a human trafficking situation if you are concerned about having metrics to see what the extent of the problem is or whether your interventions that you're spending us taxpayer money on uh to promote are having an effect a broad development policy however worthy in theory will never be something that you can measure and a pause should be taken before um turning the trafficking um mission into predominantly that development approach Lou and Susan I imagine you both have thoughts on this anything come to mind well mark was incredibly eloquent um I'm always impressed with the uh straightforward nature and the issues that both um mark and Lou bring up and I want to allow time for more questions so I'm going to let it lay where he had it because I thought that was really important great great Lou will then let me shift to the next question and it's for you from uh Bill Bernstein at mosaic family services down in Dallas um uh he said he asked this question for almost 20 years I've been talking to government officials about the need for enforcement units tasked with investigating labor trafficking cases in the United States um and then he just asked any comments from the ambassadors and I imagine we all have thoughts on this too but how would you respond to Bill's comment that it's been a long time that there's been talk about having specialized labor investigative units um but there are none yeah you know I think that some of this comes back to and you know first of all I think that I was one of those people that Bill uh talked about uh over those 20 years um and I his work and the work that mosaic does is has just been amazing throughout the years um you know I I think that one of the things is kind of understanding the trafficking law but the trafficking movement as being a not quite settled blending of two big strains of activism in the United States that goes back basically to the 1870s um on the one hand you've got folks who want to go after forced labor to stamp out the badges and incidences of slavery to have something that really flows out of an equality principle and a workers rights or free labor principle and a number of the abolitionists children then ended up getting involved also in kind of this idea of protecting morality and protecting women as they were coming to the workforce around the turn of the century and so you see this idea of the man act or the white slave trafficking act which is all focused on sex trafficking um and is focused on moving people across borders for the purposes of prostitution and it's not really until the TVPA of 2000 that those two concepts get brought together um and so we're in the year 20 of kind of undoing a thing where sex trafficking is over here and for most of those years the person who was moved into prostitution was not considered a victim they were considered a co-conspirator with their pimps and then on the other hand you have the involuntary serve between the slavery lens that's one of the things that's amazing about the great case that Susan did that I first met her on the Pipkins case where she was able to see past the difference between man act over here civil rights over here and look at the fact of sex trafficking just I was doing the case similarly down in Florida but I think what we've seen in the last few years Bill is that there's been a reversion to the norm and we have to fight that reversion to the norm the the commercial sexual exploitation of children um infrastructure in the United States pre-existed the TVPA it pre-existed the formation of the national worker exploitation task force which was focused more on forced labor um and only in the last few years have we really seen kind of the same techniques sting operations um online um work you know etc through the internet crimes against children um task forces in some ways it's as though they simply scratched out the word CSEC or scratched out the word child prostitution and wrote the word trafficking claimed credit for it and then just kept doing what they were doing and that's I think one of the reasons John why uh trafficking incomes are getting arrested is because if this is seen as a vice enforcement issue then this ends up devolving back to those techniques that are focused on prostitution enforcement rather than doing what the TVPA tip office the US government has argued for the last 20 years which is that we need to be recasting the people involved I will say globally just for just to close this off you know one of the things I noticed in countries around the world and I would not speak for everybody but I'd love to hear their thoughts you know it's a lot easier for policymakers and a lot of these governments that we would go to to stomach passing some kind of a modern version of the man act and just keep doing some sex trafficking stuff with the international um uh folks in prostitution as opposed to doing anything that actually would challenge rent seeking corruption or business as usual what we would simply call capitalism those things don't those are threatening whereas going in doing raids closing down the red light district and telling the US embassy that you did something on trafficking that is the easy thing for them to do and I think that we have to just keep the pressure um and and bell I will say I will add that um I was a member of the Atlanta act team which was an anti trafficking coordination team um that the department of justice initiated and and pilot cities I think there were ultimately 12 cities that tried to have task forces that involved multiple federal and state agencies to focus more on labor trafficking I think a large impediment to the ability to bring um coordinated enforcement in the labor trafficking area however is still the the immigration rhetoric and the climate around how we treat those who might be victims of forced labor so I think um that visa reform is on uh many people's minds as we move into a new administration with a new congress and I think that changes around um the speed with which TV says are issued and um impediments to being able to work while you wait for your TV so that those kind of issues will also help labor enforcement and should be but those policy changes should be brought along with an increased um training of law enforcement in focus on the issue like I just interject in the spirit of a dinner party I really agree with this point there there's been learning and and getting officials around the world to see trafficking does not mean primarily movement it may involve movement across borders it is about an extreme form of exploitation at its heart we had the realization during the era in which I led the office 2007-2009 that uh documented workers guest workers could indeed be trafficked whether they be in the construction workers or maids in the Gulf or um apple pickers in Washington or or tomato pickers in Florida um and and the incidence of trafficking is mostly or largely in the labor area those those understandings um are important in getting them to stick um I remember sitting with officials from Japan and saying you know one of the reasons you have you're on tier two is that you need to provide immigration relief to trafficking victims so that they can work in your country while their future is being sorted out and a prosecution is being pursued they were still seen uh as uh migrants who are really at fault these are great points and you know well it's interesting when we look at the U.S. narrative and recommendations uh speeding up and increasing the use of the T visa as well as continued presence and making sure we reduce the number of requests for evidence and a fee waiver making that easier all those sorts of things are critically important and I can tell you in my engagement with other countries we point to our T visa program and continued presence program as a best practice and many countries are encouraged I think to try and adopt it we just need to get better at using it and making it easier and easier to get those things in place because they're the right thing to do and I know personally from so many cases I worked getting that continued presence getting those TVs is done made a big difference and I also know that the you know we talk about Bill's asking about labor investigative units which we don't have but we do have the human trafficking prosecution unit at DOJ where Lou and I got to be for a little while that that is aggressively pursuing labor cases but the reality is that the number of labor cases has remained remarkably stagnant over the last 10 years in season and out of season we're not seeing a big change in the numbers and I think the bill's suggestion about specialized investigative units could make a huge difference in that now let me shift to the next question is from Ronald Brinn of the Millennium Forum and he asked this question are governments in collusion with traffickers in what appropriate sanctions approaches to addressing situations in which governments act as the trafficker and perhaps I'll take this question because we've seen a lot of movement around the issue of state sanctioned forced labor in in the 2019 reauthorization of the trafficking victims protection at Congress actually gave us a new requirement and and frankly a new tool we were supposed to determine any state that was engaged in trafficking itself that is where the the government is acting as the trafficker would have to be on tier three like all the other analysis around the three Ps would still be done but it would not be determinative that those countries would have to be on tier three this past year and the 2020 tip report was the first time we were able to apply the policy or pattern language and the secretary of state determined 10 countries to have a policy or pattern of trafficking you know when it comes to remedies it does require a different set of interventions when we think about criminality in trafficking like an individual a conspiracy or a company we think about investigations prosecutions convictions we think about shelters and protection services we think about just victim identification but for state sanctioned forced labor our interventions shift to sanctions reporting daylight multilateral pressure bilateral pressure all these other tools of diplomacy the global magnin schiak sanctions are available but there's also a new set of sanctions that were also authorized in the 2019 tv pa and hopefully we'll be able to ramp those up over the next few years and use those as a tool against governments but you know it shouldn't surprise us quite frankly that governments act as traffickers through a long period of history it's been governments that have trafficked many people whether it was armies conscripting defeated foes or monarchs seizing people or it was communist farms and the way they did sort of through collective farming in the soviet union it's there's been a long pattern of it and where it still exists we need to stamp it out did anyone want to add anything on state sanctioned forced labor well there's complicity of different types and it's worth on the smaller scale but a very important one to think about the way that diplomats are complicit in human trafficking when third party domestic workers are abused but the most striking case and the ilo has been documenting this for a while while emphasizing the private sector is the place where much of labor trafficking occurs there's still a substantial portion that is indeed either being done by governments like the chinese government seen with the weaker people or a problem created like people fleeing economic turmoil and hypocrisy and north korea and then being subjected yeah i'd add one thing and that is that i think that what we see when there's government sanctioned forced labor or government i think in the diplomatic and domestic servant cases it's often sanctioned in that the governments are then trying to prevent their people from being held accountable as opposed to having a plan in the first place to hold those people in forced labor but both of them raise i think the same challenge to our kind of established diplomatic toolkit we want to engage the folks at post their job is to engage the regional bureau their jobs are to engage and to think of it within the the geopolitical context within that region i think that we haven't we've we have spent a lot of time going to the next issue as we should with western china without taking any kind of a moment to reflect on the success in the former soviet central asian republics because usbekistan was a success it was a success over the course of a lot of years and in the first years of trying to put pressure on them about the cotton harvest i think most people thought that this was a losing battle we had to move i think somewhere around 70 of our material into a hot war through the northern distribution network through usbekistan and department of defense was necessarily nervous about looking at how we lean on usbekistan if all of our ammunition is going through there into afghanistan just as looking at the folks in the afghan army as far as their collusion in child protection excuse me in the child soldier protection act cases and these are not invalid conversations to have it is perfectly appropriate for the department of defense or for the regional bureaus to come to us at j-tip worried about the effect of anti-trafficking or anti-slavery work on the broader geopolitical issues and interests of the united states it's also perfectly appropriate for j-tip to say that country is holding people in slavery and we have to do something about it and so that ebb and flow of kind of the normal diplomatic i think one of the things we've seen over the last 20 years is that i'm guarantee you back 20 years plus ago everybody would have simply said oh well that's too bad but we need them and now and you see this with wiki leaks and mark you know the fight that he was willing to take on with oman when we needed oman to you shouldn't talk about this mark because it was your it's your cables but you know the the the reporting that ended up in those cables you know we were willing to to go to bat against a country that we were having to refuel and that controlled the entrance to the gulf while we were in a hot war at the top of the gulf and so i think that you know what we've seen is we have to do the balancing within j-tip we have to do the balancing within the u.s government and there must be a balancing but for the first time slavery now is one of the things that people have to take into account they can't simply say oh well we need that country so you know too bad and now we have officers who fight against the incentive structure if you're an officer call the poem to send in information for the tip report or help prepare the demaraches to your government after the tip report grade has been established you know usually your promotion you're getting a good job someplace else depends upon your supervisor the head of the political section the head of the economic section you know having the balance of issues in dealing with a country in mind i remember a junior officer in a g7 country adding to the list of the tip office of the demands of the government question a g7 country um because we'd begun to train people in the mindset that this was core and that was in 2008 and it's evolved so much since then and now those people are actually the paul chiefs and you know you're starting to get people at dcms who actually had the trafficking portfolio and the traffic or trafficking portfolio posts usually isn't simply doing the reporting it's often being out there in the shelters it's making those relationships with the ngos throughout the year working with the the ip section as far as programming and and foreign assistance and so i think there's become a professionalization i know that that first um that first spring when i came in there were still people especially because we had just extended in the o8 reoff to uh be able to capture all of the small island countries and there was a lot of growing pains um at post um and we had scared young first and second tour folks calling in kind of in the middle of the night saying oh my god you know don't let my you know don't let my chain of command know that i told you this but here's something that i think that jtip should know i'm gonna have to say you're being very inside baseball right now so if anybody on the conversation wants a primer and how our our scorecard diplomacy works i would recommend um utith kelly's book called scorecard diplomacy which is an excellent use of some leaked wiki leak cables that lew referenced to see how the us puts pressure on countries to change their trafficking laws and the impact it makes so if all this is making you scratch your head going what are they talking about scorecard diplomacy is a great read for you it's wonderful and i do think i do think that all the acronyms aside what we see is um we see now a generation of foreign service officers um who came in after 9 11 because they wanted to do something good in the world um and a lot of them wanted to work on global women's issues a lot of them want to work on human rights issues etc and they are now on the cusp of ambassadorships they're now on the cusp of being the you know the the political chief or the deputy chief of mission out there in the embassies i just say it's a bit of a corrective though the focus should be on civil society then great things in government improve the instruments matured uh the the the government instruments but whether they're survivor led or they're civil society groups that are actually partners offering themselves as partners to government in the united states you know i went to head Polaris after um serving uh as the tip ambassador um working with law enforcement um and governments need to look at civil society not as carpet critic but as a partner because a uh a human trafficking victim may find a civil society group much more comfortable um to go to to identify themselves or or begin the process of um reclaiming their dignity than a law enforcement or immigration official that's an important point the importance of NGOs and civil society groups and faith-based communities uh they make a big difference in this movement hey before we leave ronald's question let me just say that there's going to be an event tomorrow but just on state sanctioned forced labor um it's a it's a virtual event if you want the details of it you can go to the state department tip offices social media or on the webpage i'm sure there's a bunch of information on it there uh and feel free to register for that but it's going to be a whole presentation and series of presentations including some survivor perspectives on state sanctioned forced labor that we're really excited about participating in let me shift to another question susan i think that this one might be for you is from carol cusins del reyes at antham and she asks how do you view the role of survivors in prevention and planning for addressing and ending human trafficking uh any any thoughts about that susan yes um central vital imperative i mean all those words are so important to have survivors in the movement um i have been doing some training around the vacature law that i mentioned that just got signed into being in georgia last year and we lead with talking with attorneys who are going to be helping um navigate the legal process of of the vacature with the survivors we lead with talking about trauma informed care and how going back through that process of trying to get a conviction a wrongful conviction cleared um is going to sometimes bring up the trauma again of the trafficking experience and we have survivors on those trainings as well to talk about that and it was a whole survivor led initiative that really spoke to the first lady here in georgia about making those changes and and she really pushed for it in the legislature so just imperative to have survivors involved and imperative for law enforcement and prosecutors who are investigating these cases to lead with survivor care and understand the trauma that has been experienced and so i just think it's it's vital i already mentioned the survivor advisory council and the work they do and i don't know if they showed a picture at that time but we have a picture of myself with some of those survivor leaders and they issue a report every year around what the u.s. government can do better and i know some of those recommendations have been adopted across federal agencies so very important there um to have and continue to have um survivor leaders um we might even have some survivors being considered for the new ambassador role in the next administration who knows be tremendous be tremendous now survivors are critically important uh within this movement lou our next question comes from um karen stiles at the department of justice um here's our question for you while while there are while there are examples of good corporate conduct exploitation of workers is endemic within western companies global supply chains resulting in millions of workers at risk or actually suffering forced labor what are the prospects for transforming global business practices to prevent forced labor well i think the prospects are are cleared apartly cloudy um i think that um you know there is legislation that's been proposed uh that would be what my former deputy is now the head of icar the international corporate accountability roundtable alice and freedman often calls the fcpa for forced labor which is basically looking at the successes of the the foreign practices act uh and uh what it's done as far as corruption is concerned um and seeing whether or not we can bring that kind of regulatory structure in as well i feel like as you know as i mentioned earlier um without a regulatory structure this is the the um csr model of corporate social responsibility uh ends up being a bit of a feel-good exercise um and um it ends up being perhaps misdiagnosed or misstaffed so that you have people that aren't from the business side of the particular company or that aren't from the legal side of the particular company but rather are from marketing or other parts of the company who really aren't interrogating business practices who aren't interrogating purchasing power who aren't interrogating their supply chain one of the things that justin dillon whose freedom platform kind of flowed out of uh the work that he had done for us on the slavery footprint one of the things that he's found during the pandemic is that uh some of his clients in australia who used the freedom platform for forced labor issues coming out of the modern slavery act uh in 2019 um that he is the only thing that gives them any any way of looking into their supply chain um so suddenly when they're looking at uh personal protective equipment and other uh covid issues they don't know their own supply chain uh past the first or second tier suppliers this is something that uh susan uh and i uh in uh our work on a issue in the construction industry um the design for freedom working group that grace farms has been doing um it's one of the things that we've been shocked by how non-transparent the construction industry supply chain is nobody knows anything other than i got it at home depot and home depot doesn't really know anything other than i got it from the big company that delivered it um so i think that um figuring out how we can incentivize that kind of visibility into the supply chain uh but then adding regulatory teeth um and frankly i think that one of the things that we need to do is we need to make it so that there's more opportunities for survivors themselves to provide those regulatory teeth uh whether it's through class action lawsuits or whether it's through other uh civil actions it so shouldn't simply be uh to the state when we think about uh these types of of more robust incentives and karen i'll add too that another area where corporate accountability can be um enhanced is um a change in the administration's position the incoming administration's position on child forced labor overseas and whether corporations here in the us can be held liable and the supreme court case nestley v doe um the administration took the the current administration took the position that um corporations here in the us couldn't be liable for child forced labor overseas um and so that's another area that might make businesses pay attention if they're um forced to defend against those actions in other countries you know i have to give a quick a quick advertisement that my colleagues at Yale law school uh put in an amicus brief on that that was uh cited very much during the arguments uh and ambassador copage is one of the amici uh on that as of my yeah i'll just say that that case focused on the alien tort claim statute not a civil suit under the tv pa's extraterritorial jurisdiction and i think that um that would be an interesting test if the tv pa's civil provision was was used for a similar a similar case in the future but that's just speculation i do think karen that um that there's a lot of work to be done uh around making sure that uh companies uh are as blue said interrogating their supply chains mapping them down multiple levels um and i think that the foreign corrupt practices act provides a nice uh a nice framework uh for a similar um for similar efforts around um forced labor and supply chains and perhaps starting with wro's and civil suits and things of that nature will be the way that we go i think it's worth thinking about the honey and vinegar approach with business always and there need to be groups that work with business um but you know sometimes republican leadership on the hill or the american chamber of commerce are even more pure than any individual company would be in resisting any form of regulation um but you know they want to know rules of the road they want to know what's illegal there's nothing more powerful uh in the mind of a company is not you know um what they're supposed to do but what's legal um but in the ecosystem there you know it's important to have like you know the global business coalition against human trafficking that i ended up helping um form after my tenure um with companies like carlson and coca-cola and uh you know microsoft and google um but then there have to be those who really hold the uh the feet to the fire uh uh in the business community i still think a middle position of using transparency requirements is part of the mix part of the honey um encouraging businesses to report on what they're doing on supply chains and if they see their competitor is doing something in their public reporting um they may be driven to it's not the only tool in the toolbox but you know the uk is doing this the california law now 11 years later uh on transparency supply chains ought to be considered at the national level in the us no australia also has that construction and i think we're about to see the uk amend their modern slavery act and put some more teeth into it around due diligence so there is a lot to come in this space and i agree that um that a lot of times the the businesses are actually allies i think most corporations don't want forced labor in the supply chain they just don't know how to figure out how to find out what a vendor three or four levels deep is actually doing as they produce parts or produce um or raw materials and so oftentimes we're asking companies to do a workaround against a failed public justice system within the countries where they're where they have vendors and so it's going to take a a both and approach of holding them accountable when they are knowingly or recklessly disregarding risk and also you know having them help us get governments to improve their public justice delivery systems and let me shift to the next question um and this can be for any anybody so we'll kind of throw it out there and see who wants to grab ahold of this um what steps were taken to ensure that the issue of human trafficking remained a priority as prior administrations shifted so i think when this question's getting at it and i remember this um when we shifted from the the bush administration to the obama administration i did a detail to the front office of the civil rights division i remember a lot of discussions worries would the obama administration prioritize trafficking or would they think it was the bush administration's issue and and leave it um and of course the obama administration prioritized it and then similarly when we shifted to the trump administration there were worries that president trump wouldn't prioritize the issue since it obama had and indeed president trump prioritized it so i think what they're asking is what were the factors that went into that and can they be replicated as we move into the biden administration well you know they're they're let me i'll go quickly and then turn to susan there's very simple procedural things like making sure you know you leave a memo on the desk for your you know successor about the things that are going on the battles that are going on but preserving bipartisanship is the key don't just rely on bipartisanship much like freedom and democracy that we're seeing in our country today we shouldn't take anything for granted the bipartisan consensus on this issue has been robust but it has to be cultivated and i think one thing that's important is this one oscillation between administrations of different party and that either to to try and make sure there isn't score settling um you know it was that uh you know the ambassador before me john miller was too tilted towards sex trafficking and highly taken the late john miller was highly taken with with prostitution um as you know the problem whereas i looked at it as in the enabling environment and then you know people trying to go in a different direction afterwards just making sure that that weaving between administrations of different parties sustains particularly on capitol hill bipartisanship and it's getting harder and harder so mark you mentioned that honey and vinegar approach with business i think the appropriate approach with government is the squeaky wheel and for that we need every person that is in the anti-trafficking environment to be speaking up and to keep this a priority it's not just something that the tip office or prosecution units at doj can do it requires all the nonprofits all the faith group based groups the education based groups survivor led groups the whole coalition that we have it's not just a bipartisan issue it's across so many different um peoples and regions and issue i just it's so important that those on this call um keep raising this issue and keep bringing up progress that needs to be made because it is as the as lou mentioned the gentleman see we have more to do and it can only be done if we are being heard and we can't be heard if we don't speak up so please continue to speak up to um those in dc who can make these changes happen you know i i would even move a little farther back before the the office was founded um ambassador richman you hadn't come to the division yet but in the spring of 2001 there were understandably a lot of concerns in the civil rights division as to you know what does the you know coming in of a of a republican administration mean as far as kind of quote-unquote traditional civil rights enforcement um and you know especially because we knew that there were going to be people coming in who you know wanted to take the work of the education section and turn it around and go after affirmative action programs or people who wanted to dismantle uh the things that the housing section or the voting rights section uh were working on it one of the things that we did in the criminal section you know was to make sure uh that um folks knew very much about the bipartisan nature of of the bill um the clinton um that one of the last things that bill clinton did before he went off to to can to campaign for uh senator clinton in new york and and for uh vice president gore was to sign the bill on october 26 of 2000 and then suddenly we were in six weeks worth of litigation around who was going to be president and so a lot of what we ended up doing was working through um the kind of side of the coalition uh that we knew had uh the ties in with the new administration or the incoming administration to explain why this was a bipartisan um issue that needed to be continued and it did and to such a degree that um alex accosta who was at that point a deputy assistant attorney general ended up getting attacked from the right um because uh the word went out somehow that oh you know alex accosta just cares about farm workers and he just wants to do all these radical things for the farm workers which had a racial over over tone as well as far as you know the hispanic guy in the civil rights division is only doing things you know for his own community um you know so alex is subsequent uh things especially as as department of labor um you know aside i think that it that he and some of the other folks omar grero and and um others in those early years ralph boyd himself as the assistant attorney general um you know these folks understood um how uh anti-slavery work fit in with not just a democrat uh or a republican vision but an american vision um susan of course lived through a transition as somebody who who cycled through uh the entire thing so a little bit of it was her having conversations with herself um perhaps but you know susan you had to make sure the new people understood what you were doing right yeah i mean i had to uh approach them from the perspective of you know one of the few individuals who stayed in government in between um the obama and the trump administrations and and had to break down some skepticism about why i was still there but i think it was perceived as really important um to get the next trafficking and cursions report out with um an ambassador at the helm and this is not a knock on the team's ability to do it without an ambassador it really is more insight into the hierarchy of the state department and how ambassadors like to talk to other ambassadors um and so it was just perceived to be important to have someone at that level get the get the next the 2017 trafficking in persons report out um with someone leading that charge and there had been um what i would call bipartisan criticism of the report um which we used along with the gao um study of the report to go in and make it stronger you know don't always look at the other side's criticism as being something negative it's something that can be used as a tool to to leverage change that you couldn't leverage if it was just a one party issue so i think um making that transition um was was a very unique role for me but it was really focused on getting out that next version of the trafficking in persons report and i think this coming up version is going to be a challenge because of the inability to obtain as much data and information based on COVID and um the pressure to cut corners because resources have been spent on COVID and not on anti-trafficking measures in countries so i know that um the office will will want to get an ambassador in as soon as possible but then until then i know Carrie Johnstone will be an an adept leader she's probably gotten out as many chip reports as you and i have mark i think she'll she's she's shepherded too through the process which is what i did and i believe what you did so i think that um she should be right up there in terms of her experience level and is very capable but i know it's important again based on the hierarchy of the department to have have an ambassador in the position the one other thing that i would add and i would encourage the whoever the perspective nominee is that's hopefully watching um you know i hope that she calls us um you know one of the things that that in those um well for there was a couple of months where we weren't telling everybody yet that i was going to be a nominee um because they wanted to do things in particular orders um but you know especially once it became clear that that was going to happen and then we could have you know more open conversations you know mark was just invaluable as far as you know kind of helping me prepare for confirmation hearing being able to to be a sounding board uh you know etc and and i was lucky enough to you know talk with susan with you and and john at various stages as well and i hope that was that was helpful um but you know i i don't think i couldn't have done it i might not have done it um with as much of continuity and honoring the work of the office um if i hadn't been on the phone with mark that spring those are all great pieces of advice and and just to echo um what susan said about this coming tip report the 2021 tip report being difficult due to the shutdowns and the virus um that's something that the office has anticipated and has worked really hard to put itself in a great position or as good a position as can be and um the office is prepared for sure to um to tackle the challenges that are ahead and i also um like the squeaky wheel uh argument from groups and i think it includes groups from all corners of the anti trafficking movement um whether they feel like they're the favored groups in a season or the disfavored groups in a season so whether it's um groups that want to focus on demand or groups that want to focus on foreign national victims or focus on forced labor or domestic minor sex trafficking or international advocacy i agree with susan continue to raise your voices and um let folks know um what needs to be done from your perspective as things go forward hey our next question um is also open to anybody um it's from alissa courier wheeler at the human trafficking institute and she asks an interagency question so this might be a little inside baseball for us all but her question is what government agencies would you like to see prioritize anti trafficking work that haven't historically um to increase engagement with the interagency task force um any uh any opportunities there that where you see for an agency that hasn't historically been prioritizing this to start well at the end of my tenure we had just put the treasury department into the trafficking task force and so i think there is certainly um a focus on um anti money laundering work that treasury can do and seizing traffickers assets again hitting um both sex trafficking rings but also business operations you know where they're benefiting which is financially and in taking that financial incentive away from them so i would encourage um treasury to continue its efforts and um i'm i'm sure they have john during your tenure but they had just come on to the president's interagency task force when i was leaving and i know that there was great anticipation that they would continue to beef up their anti trafficking enforcement efforts yeah i can let you know that treasury's been an invaluable partner truce forbes over there it was part of the steering group that wrote the national action plan they've been involved in a big report that we just did on um anti money laundering in uh the trafficking space and that report's now been released to congress and is available if folks want to read it um and of course on sanctions whether we're thinking about global magnitsky act sanctions other things that o-fact does over at treasury uh there's lots of opportunity for treasury to be engaged in we're grateful for them luah mark did you guys have any comments about elissa's question um it's a good question um i agree with the ones that you've raised i'd raise a couple of others um so ironically i would say the nsc because i you know we've had the domestic policy council involved uh a good reform uh during um john's tenure has been to have a point person um at the white house but it's at the domestic policy council but i really think um as long as it's not in place in the tip office but it's working in concert with the tip office um there have tended to be people in in the white house a daughter of a president domestic policy council people in in the republican administrations um who have done this i think the new now that opic has been turned into um the development uh international development finance corporation um uh it lies at the crossroads of a form of investment in the developing world that engages business and i think as that evolves uh we need to think of it as not just you know kind of countering china with its belt and road initiative around the world with our own infrastructure loans um whatever merits there are to that to to thinking about how it can it can be used um also i just want to say the opposite which is not to allow too much sprawl i think there are there are problems with not having um the guidance uh about interagency policy flowing from the tip office the original trafficking victims protection act gave it a um a role in the interagency process uh it may you know first among equals maybe not the dominant role um we should be careful um that that not float away from being the case and great inventions um like you know the global fund for eliminating modern slavery need to make sure that they are adding to a coherent policy um where the tip office is is seen as the the locus of the strategy yeah i'd actually um tag team on that i think that one of the things that we see with treasury um is the thing that i both admire and fear which is you know that anything that therese of forbes recommends is something that i usually i'm going to want to do um because i think that she's not only uh just a phenomenal lawyer but i think that she really you know has a good strategic vision um but she's one person uh in one part of the treasury department she's been able to do an amazing amount of of of work um but you know the parts of the treasury department that deal with the international financial institutions the world bank and the and the the fund um the imf and the world bank you know we're talking they don't even talk about billions of dollars they talk about trillions of dollars worldwide global infrastructure spend elf etc and that's something that we haven't really ever gotten through and i think the only way that we get through that we tried through state department ways in but really at the end of the day it is through the treasury department so i think that there's a there's probably going to be a need for a political appointee over it you know somebody higher up at the treasury department who is doing this so that we can give wings uh to the stuff that teresa and the folks um in uh office of foreign assets control have been doing the other thing that i'd suggest is actually kind of circling back to some of the legacy um leader leadership agencies um i it pains me to say it um and especially because i know that there are great people who are working on this um but you know over at the justice department um it's unconscionable that trafficking got taken away from the civil rights unit at the fbi and put in crimes against children if bill for bill's question earlier if you want to know why it's almost impossible to get a labor trafficking case done that was a very quiet move that i don't think that a lot of people knew about um or do know about the groups uh i don't think had any input in it um but what it does is it betrays a misunderstanding of what human trafficking actually is um part of that might date back to even during the obama registration the national um coordinator for uh child exploitation uh which was created in 2008 in a different piece of legislation that was not the will workforce act um has morphed into the trafficking coordinator position and there's been phenomenal people good people coming out of the u.s. attorney's offices uh folks who we worked with in civil rights you know etc there's been great people in there and they care uh but again they're coming at it from only one aspect um and they're you know what they wake up in the morning and do is child pornography um or other crimes against children and so i think we have to look at that especially as we are having to push back on a conspiracy theory that is based upon only one aspect of human trafficking which we've seen out there in qanon and others who um want to take uh something good as far as the fight against child exploitation and harness it into something anti-democratic uh and exclusionary yeah luke oh you mentioned uh financial institutions and that goes well to the next question we have from uh david abramowitz um he has asked in the chaspate uh what's the role for financial institutions and financial regulators in preventing trafficking and contributing to the progress that's been made on the supply chain side of the equation um anyone want to want to take david's question about the role for financial institutions and financial regulators can we brag on him first yeah absolutely so david abramowitz you know is one of the reasons why we're all here on this call um you know david's vision and by the way he is also Wolverine so go blue um but um i had to get susan back for a roll tide comment she made the other day now the um you know i think that one of the things that we've seen with david's work when he was working for mr lantos uh actually all the way back to mr gaidinson um but throughout on at the house um also then at uh humanity united and and then now back up on the house uh side as staffer you know that you know kind of notion of really the hunger for where are the solutions sitting uh and who are the people who we need to harness in and that's i think a hallmark of what david's brought to the to the fight over the last 20 years um that's the bragging part david was also one of the first four or the original four family board members of the global fund um and has been a great counselor to me as well but go ahead why don't we add why don't we answer his actual question about financial institutions and financial regulators yeah i can i'll do one very quick one and then and then toss it out to everybody else you know the efforts that have been done so far you know have been kind of the big you know leadership cheerleading efforts saying that it should be done in the first place um kind of the hey we're davos so let's get together and say that this should be done i think that it's now is the time uh where you know we need to get the folks who are uh kind of more at the point of the spear as far as money laundering and other risk management within the actual institutions um i think especially with correspondent banking um not simply the big commercial banks who we all know and think that we could go open a account with but the the big ones like pny melan um have started to look at this in no small part because of the work uh that's been done by uh liberty shared uh formerly liberty asia a j-tip uh grantee in setting up the the victim case management system that really started gathering information and intel that then could go up to risk assessment uh by hsbc and pny melan and others in southeast asia um so i feel like that needs to be intensified we see a hunger from the banks they want to know what their exposure is i'd go one step farther though and go to rating agencies as well i feel like moody's and standard and poor as you know the overarching cost of money um reflecting this um as risk um is uh going to eventually just like uh insurance and the um the take that insurers uh have on whether they're going to indemnify uh on these things i think those are going to end up driving a lot of um a lot of different ways of doing business and different ways of lending um but i'd be very interested in hearing from my counterparts on that susan i know you thought through a lot of that when you were at nardello as well as it sits yeah i was just going to say when i was um the ambassador we were doing a lot of dark web DARPA stuff that was beyond my um ability to work on but certainly very exciting and interesting to hear about and i think there's a lot of room in the technology space for um tracing uh money laundering proceeds and and illegally obtained proceeds and so i think the technology side can keep up now with more of the international banking system and that we need to focus on bringing technology in so that institutions can do this more readily and share it with law enforcement um who can then seize the assets again hitting hitting that pocketbook is so key you know we have seen some financial institutions at risk here we saw in new york state department of financial services had a huge fight against deutche bank uh for compliance failures around a sex trafficking enterprise um australian regulators had a huge uh finding its west pack bank um recent new york times article uh examining the finances around porn hub and things of that nature so i think there are some financial service accountability measures as well but mark i think you had something to share about that i was just going to say i think this is a little banks uh and financial uh houses are a bit like businesses and you know oftentimes there is a person at the helm in the c-suite and there's someone who's driving it in the legal department the c-s-r department or some other uh you know in a business compliance department um i see an example in the early dialogue about a global business coalition against human trafficking jp morgan chase was was really active they were already looking at money from money laundering and they just thought that they ought to begin looking at patterns of finance uh use of credit cards for human trafficking and sex trafficking and then uh you know a change in leadership happened and prioritization changed so should focus on the private actors uh in the financial sector but they require that combination of honey and vinegar engagement and legal um requirements um so that there's consistency as leadership changes great great well you know i think we may have run out of our time here but before we end um i wanted to uh to make sure that we close out the program on a hopeful note because i think there is a lot of reason for hope and honestly it's been thread throughout this entire conversation all of these facts all these ideas are are part of this idea of sustaining hope but maybe we end with this we'll go around the um what's the one piece of advice that you would give the next ambassador to the trafficking in person's office um or what's one thing that makes you hopeful about the progress um of the anti trafficking movement in 2021 so mark i want to start with you okay well at my one key um piece of advice is keep your eyes on the ball of survivors with you know there's always been rhetoric about a survivor first approach but we should think about every step if you end up pursuing prosecution in a fashion that's at the expense of uh survivors rather than re-empowering them um that's problematic and if you move to looking preventing people from becoming human trafficking victims and um broad development approaches that are that are worthwhile don't take your eye off the ball um of those who are in slavery in human trafficking situations and survivors um try to walk the walk not just talk the talk and survivors um the thing that makes me hopeful is the awareness think of how different knowledge of what human trafficking is than when Lou was a prosecutor using you know um uh you know legal means for fighting slavery and then the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was put in place now the problem is that that awareness is limited and so the word trafficking can be distracting uh and have you look at the movement and the migration um as uh the current president for a few days um I think this characterizes things uh and so and and there are those um who you know focus on one aspect of human trafficking they're they're concerned about you know white children in the united states and not the you know heavily um you know marginalized and minority um population of those who are really uh you know survivors so um awareness makes me hopeful but we need to make sure that we go from awareness to action don't just pass laws on human trafficking in around the world help countries implement that's great Mark thank you thank you Lou yeah I think um you know first of three things first of all definitions matter um and that definitions need to be contested and they need to be argued about and they need to be tested out in the real world but at the end of the day we are dealing with something that flows out of article four of the universal declaration of rights and out of the 13th amendment's promise of freedom and anything that gets us away from that I think risks us falling into a border security frame or other things that end up being exclusionary and about um basically preserving the power of the state or the power of the infrastructure as opposed to using the state power on behalf of people and so a definitions matter b um freedom centrality uh c freedom centrality basically takes you to what mark has suggested um if you are saying that you are going to be doing this so that you are because you're vindicating the rights of people uh who have suffered uh a human rights violation uh then the answer does not take you to deporting them the answer does not take you to jailing them the answer should take you to bringing them in um and welcoming them into the thing that was taken away from them and so that kind of inclusivity I think flows directly out of the the core concept I think the other thing that I would say to every to everybody and that the reason that I have hope is that I see in the survivors that I work with um uh whether it's on uh particular projects for DOJ for instance with Evelyn Chumbao working on a forced labor project or whether it's uh folks who I'm in meetings with and otherwise um is that I see the exact same spirit uh that um is why uh we at least used to have a great big um uh portrait of fredder douglas hanging in the conference room uh at jtip that sometimes uh people from other countries would see in the background on uh calls like this back in the day and say which president is was that again um and of course fredder douglas never made it to be president but you know a former child slave who self emancipated taught himself how to read uh and became an ambassador uh and more importantly ended uh worked with others to end the thing that had been done to him um I think we have to to remember that everything we do has to be guided by what he said um which is um basically that this is hard work uh you can't have progress without the without struggle just like you can't have the the wonderful ocean without the roar of the waves uh and that's because power has never conceded anything without a demand it never has and it never will this office and and this movement I think is a unique place in which we actually have an official role of trying to insist upon that and make that demand that's great I can encourage you Lou that portrait of fredder douglas is still hanging uh in the conference room uh and uh you know fredder douglas also ended his career as a united states marshal the top law enforcement officer for the district of columbia um an incredible an incredible leader susan to you yeah I mean this is a hopeful movement as Lou um summarized it if you don't have optimism that you're making a difference it's really hard to stay in this fight because it's it's never ending right it has this feeling that you're always trying to push back on numbers and on reluctant governments or recalcitrant businesses so you're always having to to kind of beat your head against the wall but that's where that hope and that optimism comes in that that will make a difference um and and the movement goals keep changing which gives us hope we're you know now looking at labor trafficking more we're looking at changing um immigration regulations and procedures to improve our efforts to combat labor trafficking there's always something to be done and the people on this call and the people in the movement are what give me hope that we will continue to make great progress in this area and those people obviously include the survivors um the survivors are now taking a leadership role across many NGOs and hopefully will soon in government and just to keep pushing it and to have that um the other two did not address the the question about advice for the next ambassador but i would always say to rely on the um wonderful experience and knowledge and skill that is in j-tip the people there have been living and breathing this through all of us some people still there jane about to leave i think she's made it through all the ambassadors up to now and certainly her presence will be missed but other people yeah other people come into that office with the dedication and commitment and the hope and the optimism that we all have that we're going to make a difference in this fight um so certainly rely on um on the office as an incoming ambassador they have this issue and they can support you um as you learn how to lead and and give voice to the voiceless as we all have strived to do so that's great in addition to jane there are two people in the office who have been there since the force opened which is amy o'neill richard and carla burry they have endured all of us and probably deserve some sort of award for that these are great suggestions so mark reminding us to be survivor centered and not just have awareness but move to action lou your your encouragement that definitions matter to avoid the border security frame and keep freedom central the centrality of freedom and i really appreciate susan your comments about people generating the hope a survivor leadership and relying on the team at the state department um i've certainly benefited a great deal from them you know i might add to this list to also guard against the drift towards the development approach or just a vulnerability reduction approach because i think it will dilute the limited resources we have and reduce the ability to measure results um to avoid the idea that all three p's in the three p paradigm should not continue to advance um they all need to improve and get better i think they're inextricably intertwined and mutually reinforcing the thing i would say is pick just one or two things to try and get done during your time it will go by way too fast and their bureaucracy is difficult to implement any change within um and so i just pick one or two things focus in on that work with the team to try and accomplish it um and i think um that will will stand you well great as i'm sorry mark great advice you know as um as we end this i i just want to thank a few people uh one is i want to thank um the three of you um as well as as nancy who also participated with us in some of our meetings um you know folks won't know this because it was quiet but we would meet quarterly on video uh i wish we had done it more in person uh and in sort of an ambassador's council to discuss uh things of the office for me to get advice from you and whether i was during my onboarding and sort of my confirmation process or while i've gotten to serve as ambassador i have been really grateful for your friendship in your council in your wisdom um and just being a sounding board so i'm grateful for that i hope that pattern continues into the future um i also want to thank the team at the trafficking in person's office you know as susan commented their their work is incredibly professional they're resilient they make a difference and have an impact and it's been an honor to to serve alongside them and to serve them as they do this important work um in particular you know we've mentioned carrie a couple times but christine buckholz has been with us and done amazing work laura brunlett um it should is is worth her weight in gold i don't know what i would do without her brain um you know she's she's incredible there's a ton of other folks you guys i actually think she's worth my weight in gold a lot more gold that's the best line of this entire conference that's awesome um it's just an incredible team it's an incredible group and um you know we get to come in and steward this work for just a short period of time um but we're we're just really really grateful um i also want to thank all the people who are watching online and all other groups that we've gotten to meet with um as susan said continue to advocate continue to push forward um as as we get these things done and work hard um you can follow each of these folks we have all their social media stuff on our on the state department social media so follow these guys and all their amazing work as they continue in this as well as the state department on facebook and at j-tip underscore state um and since lu mentioned frederick douglas let me end our time with one of my favorite douglas quotes um that gives me a lot of hope as we think about sustaining hope this month and that is he frederick douglas said it's not light that we need but fire it's not the gentle shower but thunder we need the storm the whirlwind and the earthquake and as i think about moving towards action and action generating tangible hope i think that frederick douglas's words about bringing the storm the whirlwind and the fire to disrupt the status quo and help repel us into 2021 is um is well put so with that let me thank everyone for joining uh and look forward to the next time we get to chat thank you