The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade

9 STRAP ON YOUR SIX-GUNS

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE grim-faced world leaders have rattled their sabers, threatening—even vowing—to implement firm measures to stop the ongoing sex crimes committed daily against defenseless women and girls. These crimes have continued unabated. What seemed to be missing from the equation is a no-nonsense, action-oriented sheriff—an individual, or better yet, an influential and powerful nation—to ride in and clean up the mess, convincingly and with authority.

In the late 1990s a handful of outraged members of Congress decided that the American government should take on the role of world sheriff and police countries around the world involved in sex trafficking and forced labor. Spearheaded by Congressman Christopher Smith, the October 2000 passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act was heralded as a hopeful sign. The U.S. would use its power and influence to coerce complacent and complicit governments into action. The new law was to be the big stick that would spur political will among errant nations and force them to put an end to this modern-day slave trade.

On paper, the act is one very tough piece of legislation. In practice, it has turned out to be just another piece of paper.

One of the sticks this law provides for is the publication of an annual State Department report on how countries are dealing with the problem. It is meant to embarrass, to cajole and to trigger a swift, firm response. In the words of the State Department, the report serves “as a major diplomatic tool for the U.S. government” to help other governments “focus their future work on prosecution, protection, and prevention programs and policies.”

Immediately after the act passed the sheriff went to work, ordering staff at 186 U.S. embassies and consulates to compile and file reports on the extent of trafficking in their respective host countries and the host governments’ efforts to address the problem. Along with these country assessments, the sheriff amassed data from other U.S. government agencies, UN organizations, international human rights groups, the news media, academics and foreign governments. But the most valuable source of information came from those closest to the action— local and international humanitarian aid groups that worked on the front line.

The next step for the sheriff was critical—ranking the performance of each country and then placing them in “tiers.” There are three of them. Tier One is for nations in full compliance with the “minimum standards” for tackling the problem of trafficking. Tier Two is for countries that are not yet meeting those minimum standards but are “making significant efforts” to do so. Then there is the infamous Tier Three, designating those nations that are neither fully compliant with the minimum standards nor making any significant effort to do so. The minimum standards are all about what governments should be doing to combat trafficking, and the act sets out specific criteria to determine whether countries are making serious and sustained efforts to eliminate the practice. The criteria include prosecution of perpetrators, protection of victims and educating the public about human trafficking.

According to the act, beginning with the 2003 report, the sheriff will be given the authority to start swinging the big stick and move in on the bad guys. In other words, those countries on Tier Three had better beware. They will be subject to tough sanctions, principally termination of nonhumanitarian, non-trade-related assistance. They will also face U.S. opposition to assistance from international financial institutions, specifically the International Monetary Fund and multilateral development banks such as the World Bank.

But there is a loophole. There’s always a loophole. All or part of the sanctions may be waived by the U.S. president in order “to avoid significant adverse effects on vulnerable populations,” not to mention “the national interest of the United States.”

The first Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report card came out in July 2001, and it rattled a lot of cages. It relegated twenty-three countries—including Greece, Israel, Russia, Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia and South Korea—to Tier Three for their abysmal records on dealing with trafficking. As expected, the rankings triggered a spate of diplomatic protests from those nations. Greece and South Korea fired off letters of protest. But the truly stunning announcement in the first report was the inclusion of Israel in Tier Three. No one ever expected the U.S. government to deliver such a public humiliation to its major Middle East ally. The move, therefore, was taken as a signal that the U.S. State Department was serious about the issue.

But despite the apparently respectable first effort, it was obvious to some observers that diplomatic considerations and politics were in play. Some of the more notorious nations with shameful trafficking records—including Moldova, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Poland and Japan—somehow managed to land in Tier Two, thus avoiding the threat of economic sanctions.

International human rights organizations reined in any sharp criticism, however. After all, this was the State Department’s first-ever attempt to assess the situation on a global scale. It was entitled to a few misjudgments and miscal- culations. Critics figured that with a little tinkering, the 2002 report would correct the anomalies and inconsistencies and toss a slew of foot-dragging nations into Tier Three where they rightly belonged—and start the process of pushing governments around the world to move forcibly on freeing hundreds of thousands of women and girls from sexual bondage within their own national borders.

Human Rights Watch, as well as many other nongovernmental groups, strongly urged the State Department to include in its second annual report the role of state complicity and corruption in facilitating trafficking as well as government measures to identify, investigate and prosecute state agents involved in the trade. The organization also asked it to report on human rights protections of trafficking victims. More important, they wanted the State Department to include specifics on what concrete measures governments were taking to prosecute traffickers.

When the second annual report was released its wording was strong and inspired, but it rang hollow. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell stood at a podium in the department’s news media briefing room and rattled off a prepared statement lauding the 2002 TIP Report—a 110-page document evaluating the past year’s performance of eighty-nine countries. Declaring that this latest report “represents the resolve of the entire U.S. government to stop this appalling assault on the dignity of men, women and children,” Powell noted that it “shines a much-needed light on this global problem. We use the information we collect to bolster the will of the international community to combat this unconscionable crime.” Powell concluded that he hoped the findings would “galvanize action across the globe. If the world community works together, countless thousands can be spared abuse and despair, and those already victimized can be helped back to lives of dignity and freedom.”

But a close read of the report revealed that few nations had little to be worried about, even if they did the bare minimum to stop the traffic. It did not correct the previous year’s errors and it did not include any of the key concerns voiced by human rights groups. In fact, the State Department actually elevated a number of nations that it had blacklisted the year before: Albania, Yugoslavia, Romania and Israel were promoted to Tier Two, and South Korea pole-vaulted to Tier One. What had become patently obvious to the many human rights advocates who’d been pushing for tougher action is that geopolitics and cocktail diplomacy had superseded the rape of hundreds of thousands of young women and girls. The sheriff’s big stick had been reduced to a limp pussy willow.

How State Department officials reached certain conclusions is puzzling. But one thing is obvious—they couldn’t have read the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices their colleagues had produced just three months earlier in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Those Country Reports deal, in part, with the trafficking situation in each country.

For example, the Country Report on Albania—a notorious source and transit country for huge numbers of East European women and girls trafficked to Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany and Britain—noted that trafficking “remained a serious problem,” adding that government efforts to address the issue “have not yielded concrete results.” The report also pointed out that “police corruption and involvement in trafficking was a problem.” It went on to say that police “were often directly or indirectly involved” in the trade, and that because of corruption the Albanian Ministry of Public Order was largely ineffectual in its anti-trafficking measures. It also said the ministry failed to follow up on high-profile trafficking and corruption investigations and did not prosecute any police officers for corruption, adding that “local police often tip off traffickers when raids are scheduled.” It concluded that police treatment of women “remained a problem,” and that victims have been raped while in police custody.

Meanwhile, the 2002 TIP report on Albania trumpets that there were at least twelve convictions for trafficking women from December 2000 to October 2001. In fact, nine of the traffickers received only minimum sentences, and the other three—who fled the country—were sentenced in absentia. Moreover, all those convictions were later reduced to charges, such as promoting prostitution. The TIP report also states that “police corruption hinders anti-trafficking efforts” and that “10 percent of foreign victims trafficked through Albania reported that police were directly involved.” Lastly, it notes that the government does not have a “comprehensive witness protection program” and that there are no government-sponsored prevention efforts.” Yet for some inexplicable reason, bureaucrats at the U.S. State Department felt Albania should be elevated to Tier Two level. The sole reason it offers for the upgrade is that while Albania doesn’t fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, “it is making efforts to do so.”

One of the more puzzling promotions to Tier Two is Yugoslavia. That this utterly corrupt trafficking nation was elevated can only be construed as either absolute ineptness or diplomatic stupidity. UN police officers and humanitarian aid workers in neighboring Bosnia-Herzogovina and Kosovo and vice-squad investigators with police departments throughout the European Union have compiled reams of reports showing that thousands of trafficking victims from Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Romania and the Czech Republic are taken to Belgrade and other towns in Yugoslavia where they are systematically broken and then sold to pimps and brothel owners worldwide. Serbian gangsters are notorious for their brutality, and corruption permeates every level of government. Moreover, the March 2002 State Department Country Report points out that traffickers in Yugoslavia are rarely prosecuted and that the women found during police raids are prosecuted for prostitution and deported after serving their sentences.

Israel’s upgrade from the worst-offender tier came as no surprise to human rights observers worldwide. To understand the State Department’s decision you have to go back to the release of the first TIP report—whose stunning announcement that Israel was placed on Tier Three set cell phones ringing throughout the Washington diplomatic corps—and the intense backroom maneuvering that took place in the months that followed.

The 2001 TIP report accused the Israeli government of not making “significant efforts” to combat trafficking. It severely chastised the nation for “failing to undertake vigorous efforts against trafficking, especially given the occasional violent methods of traffickers and the significant numbers of women who are trafficked into the country.” It also slammed the government for not working with other governments on trafficking cases, not conducting anti-trafficking campaigns or other efforts aimed at prevention, not actively encouraging victims to raise charges against traffickers and failing to provide adequate funding to Israeli nongovernmental organizations that assist victims of trafficking.

For Israel, the ranking had potentially explosive ramifications. That nation receives almost $3 billion in assistance from the U.S. each year. So it was no small consideration that under the U.S. Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act signed into law by former president Bill Clinton in October 2000, any country listed on Tier Three when the 2003 TIP report is released will be subject to economic sanctions.

The ranking not only raised the prospect of future economic repercussions, but was also an extremely embarrassing diplomatic moment. Hookers in the Holy Land was the last thing anyone had expected as a hot-button issue in this troubled region of the world. Suddenly the eyes of the international community were focused on Israel in an attempt to understand what was going on, and, as we shall see, what was going on was absolutely shocking.

YOU HAVE ALREADY MET Sigal Rozen and Nomi Levenkron, two outspoken Israeli human rights activists. Their tiny, ramshackle office is a stone’s throw from the busiest brothel neighborhood in Tel Aviv. The two women have fought a pitched battle for most of a decade trying to get their government to act decisively on the booming trafficking situation. They have been threatened and even accused of treason for bringing the issue before the United Nations and a U.S. Congressional Committee.

In a lengthy interview, Rozen, director of the Hotline for Migrant Workers—the nongovernmental agency that focuses on the plight of illegal foreign workers—and Levenkron, the Hotline’s gutsy lawyer, detailed the chilling reality of prostitution in modern-day Israel. According to Rozen,

For years, human rights and women’s groups in Israel have lobbied the government to tackle the problem. Yet time and again their entreaties have been rebuffed, officialdom preferring to turn a blind eye to the egregious violations that trafficked women suffer on a daily basis. Few people in positions of power seemed the least bit interested in helping the victims. After all, government ministers argued, there were more pressing issues on the agenda.

The 2001 TIP report wasn’t the first public humiliation on this issue. On May 18, 2000, Amnesty International released a blistering twenty-three-page report entitled “Human Rights Abuses of Women Trafficked from the Commonwealth of Independent States into Israel’s Sex Industry.” It accused the government of failing to take even minimal steps to protect these women, whom it effectively treated as criminals: “This is so even though many of them have been subjected to human rights abuses such as enslavement or torture, including rape and other forms of sexual abuse by traffickers, pimps or others involved in Israel’s sex industry.”

The Israeli Knesset reacted by amending the criminal code, making it illegal to buy and sell human beings for prostitution, but nothing much changed for trafficked women in the Promised Land. Nor was the new law much of a deterrent to thugs who went on importing hundreds of women and girls from Ukraine, Russia, Moldova and Romania for forced labor in the sex industry.

Human Rights Watch waded into the debate in early 2002, taking Israel to task for failing to provide the women even minimal human rights protections. “Trafficking victims feared cooperating with law enforcement officials and had no incentive to do so,” HRW charged, adding that “state complicity and corruption also played a role in trafficking into Israel.”

Then on March 18, 2002—just three months before the release of the second annual TIP report—the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the Israeli Awareness Center presented a joint report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on the “Activities and Actual Facts on the Trafficking in Persons for the Purpose of Prostitution in Israel.” The groups pointed out that while meeting with the Israeli parliamentary investigative committee on trafficked women two weeks earlier, Justice Minister Meir Shitrit had attacked them for passing information on to the U.S. and the UN about the trafficking situation in Israel. “The United Nations is anti-Israeli in most of the cases,” Shitrit angrily declared. “This is exactly as collaborating with the enemy—pass [your report] also to the Palestinians if you want.”

In its lengthy, shocking presentation to the UN, the groups stressed that collaboration between the pimps and the police continues unabated, “whether this is in a passive manner by visiting the brothels as clients or in an active manner such as being involved in the trade and warning them of police raids. Most of the women are scared of making a complaint against the police.”

It was yet another human rights embarrassment for Israel. But word began to trickle out that the U.S. State Department was about to raise Israel to Tier Two status in its upcoming TIP report. That rumor mill gained a lot of credibility when U.S. Ambassador Nancy Ely-Raphel—director of the State

Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking— appeared before the U.S. Congressional Committee on International Relations on April 24, 2002.

The topic on the table—“The UN and the Sex Slave Trade in Bosnia: Isolated Case or Larger Problem in the UN System?”—had nothing to do with Israel. Yet during her closing statement, Ely-Raphel suddenly interjected: “This hearing is about trafficking and the UN, but… I would like to say for the record the government of Israel has undertaken initiatives to eradicate trafficking.”

At that moment everyone knew the fix was in. On June 5, 2002, Israel got elevated. At the press conference Ely-Raphel gushed that Israel was a “success story,” and that it had aggressively pursued anti-trafficking initiatives since the first report was issued in 2001, “extensively coordinating with us on practical measures and policy strategies.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. It was obvious that in elevating Israel, human rights had taken a back seat to political diplomacy. True, Israel had made some changes to its criminal laws, but based on its overall performance it fell well short of dealing with the problem effectively. It did not merit a passing grade.

A week later Rozen and Levenkron responded to the State Department ranking with a measured press release. “This redesignation is primarily the result of vocal lobbying in Washington by Israeli and American Jewish interests. The central enforcement policy continues to focus on the deportation of women, thus treating them as criminals rather than as victims.” They concluded that as long as the enforcement system in Israel “does not act in a definitive manner against the crime of trafficking, and as long as the State of Israel puts most of its efforts into lobbying in the United States rather than making sincere changes on the ground, this abominable phenomenon will continue to flourish in Israel uninterrupted.”

As for the pimps, the authors added, they “typically purchase new women and continue to operate uninterrupted.”

THE ASCENT OF ISRAEL, Albania and Yugoslavia to Tier Two, together with South Korea’s leap from Tier Three to One and the maintenance of several nations with questionable trafficking records on Tier Two, meant that the gloves were now off. Sustained, angry criticism buffeted the State Department. Human rights workers wondered aloud how so many countries with truly abysmal records managed to escape a Tier Three ranking and its attendant U.S. sanctions and world condemnation. In total, eighteen countries perched high on Tier One; fifty-two landed safely in Tier Two, and only nineteen wallowed in Tier Three—with the exception of Russia and Greece, most of them insignificant to U.S. interests. Worldwide trafficking, during this time, continued to flourish.

Leading a vociferous attack against the 2002 TIP report was Gary Haugen, president of the International Justice Mission, a nongovernmental organization that actively investigates cases of sexual trafficking of children in developing countries. He charged that the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act “has turned out to be the whitewash that many feared”:

Haugen also noted that for the second year, the very structure of the report continued to conceal the objective data that would allow an accurate assessment of a country’s performance. “The end result,” he said, “is to give a passing grade to the most egregious offenders and provide them with absolutely no incentive to change.”

LaShawn Jefferson of Human Rights Watch agreed: “It’s a shame that one can still read these reports and end up not knowing basic facts. For this report to be relevant, specificity matters. There is little evaluative information in the report.”

With figures provided for only seven of the eighty-nine countries, the 2002 report is, indeed, virtually devoid of hard numbers. How can the State Department rate a nation’s efforts if it makes no reference to numerical data? Crucial in determining a country’s record are three factors: the number of women and children who have been victimized; the number of arrests, prosecutions and convictions for trafficking; and the number of police and government employees disciplined for complicity in sex trafficking.

Without these criteria, Haugen charged, the report “is disastrously unhelpful for those of us who are trying to work with governments to eradicate sex trafficking. The report trivializes the importance of actually convicting the perpetrators of these crimes by refusing to provide any objective data for the worst-offending countries.” As a result of this blatant omission, “countries will not believe that the United States is serious about its report or about trafficking.”

Critics of the report also began to question the existence of Tier Two, which some labeled a “safe harbor” for so many egregiously offending nations. Countries on Tier Two have actually failed to meet the “minimum standards” in combating sex trafficking, but are nonetheless deemed by the State Department as attempting to address the problem. In other words, they may have passed a law or tossed a trafficker or two in prison. They may have held a conference on trafficking and initiated a few education and aftercare programs. The Tier Two ranking in effect removes any incentive for these countries to do better. It has no penalties, no consequences and little shame attached to it. So why bother doing more?

Not two weeks after the release of the TIP report, Donna Hughes, professor of women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island, appeared before the U.S. House Committee on International Relations. She did not mince words. Hughes, one of the leading voices in the campaign against trafficking, told committee members that she hadn’t heard a single word of praise for the report.

Hughes noted that at a briefing to nongovernmental organizations a week after the report’s release, Ambassador Nancy Ely-Raphel said that the factor that weighed heaviest in determining tier placement was prosecution of traffickers. Yet there are countries in Tier Two, and even in Tier One, that have imprisoned few if any traffickers. And “even in countries where there are more convictions, there is little evidence that they have been sufficient to stem the tide of trafficking of thousands of victims,” Hughes pointed out.

Ely-Raphel had also told the assembled NGO delegates that in its evaluation of a country’s efforts to prevent and combat trafficking, the State Department assessment teams did not consider prostitution itself, nor the demand for trafficking victims.

An outraged Hughes reminded the committee that in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Southern U.S. agriculture economy, slaves were needed to pick cotton. “To not understand the relationship between prostitution and trafficking is like not understanding the relationship between slavery in the

Old South and the kidnapping of victims in Africa and the transatlantic shipment of them to our shores.”

Of particular concern to the critics was the link between legalized prostitution in countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Australia and the trafficking of women and girls for the sex trade. But Ely-Raphel had downplayed the connection, stating at the briefing that she believes the trafficking of sex slaves to those countries is only “anecdotal.” Her comment drew gasps of disbelief.

Hughes told House Committee members she believes “that view is either extremely naive or a gross lack of political will to face up to what the trafficking of women and children for the sex trade is all about.”

Ironically, just two months before the release of the 2002 report, more than a hundred organizations representing hundreds of thousands of Americans and human rights advocates for women and children around the world sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell urging him to remove the Netherlands and Germany from the vaunted Tier One rung and toss them onto a lower tier where they more rightly belonged. The organizations pointed out that in the preceding two years, both countries had legalized prostitution, pimping and brothels—“policies that will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the trafficking of women to those countries.” Powell was reminded that as a minimum standard under U.S. law governments are required to make serious and sustained efforts to eliminate trafficking, and that one of the criteria is whether a country has adopted measures to prevent trafficking.

“Legalized prostitution, pimping and brothels severely violate this criterion,” the letter said. “We know that legalizing prostitution, pimping and brothels increases prostitution and the need for more women in the sex industry.”

While prostitution has been tolerated in the Netherlands for decades, the government officially legalized it in October 2000. Today, the Dutch sex industry is a $1-billion-a-year business, representing 5 percent of the nation’s economy. Moreover, studies show that one year after legalization, traffickers in the Netherlands controlled more than half the women in prostitution and that very few Dutch women were in the brothels. They’re stocked with women from thirty-two different countries, most trafficked in from Central and Eastern Europe.

The situation in Germany is similar, although the numbers of women trafficked into that country are staggering. Germany legalized prostitution in December 2001, stating officially that the practice is no longer seen as immoral. Of the 400,000 women thought to be involved in prostitution in that country, 75 percent are foreigners, 80 percent of whom come from Central and Eastern European countries. The estimated take from bars, clubs and brothels is $4.5 billion a year.

Human rights activists argue that legalized prostitution makes it extremely difficult to hold traffickers and pimps accountable for their activities. These criminals manage to avoid prosecution by claiming that the women consented to work as prostitutes. As a result, prosecutors generally complain that they face an uphill battle in establishing the line between voluntary and forced prostitution. But the more serious problem lies with the police, who can now simply ignore the burgeoning brothel industry.

The legalization of prostitution also sends a very negative message to other countries. Human rights groups contend that leaving Germany and the Netherlands on the Tier One rung might be interpreted as a tacit acceptance of legalized prostitution by the State Department. Even more worrisome is how the increased demand for women will be filled. It’s obvious that the vast majority will come from other countries, and there is no doubt that many will be victims of trafficking.

Indeed, the recruitment of women for the sex industry in Germany and the Netherlands has begun in earnest. At a conference on trafficking women in Kyiv, Ukraine, in June 2000, a representative from the Dutch embassy explained that women outside the European Union have “working skills that could benefit the Netherlands,” adding that the Dutch sex industry could be assisted by creating special work permits to all “foreign nationals to engage in prostitution.” How benevolent of the Dutch government to offer young Ukrainian women a way out of abject poverty!

In their letter to Powell, those working diligently to put an end to the trafficking of women and children exhorted the U.S. government to use the TIP report “to send a clear message to the Netherlands, Germany and the entire world that we will stand firm against the trafficking of women for prostitution.” Powell and his cronies at the State Department obviously decided to ignore the entreaty, and left both countries respectfully on the premier tier.

But let’s take an even closer look at the top tier. Residing there is every single member of the European Union, with the exception of Greece, which rightly languishes on the bottom rung. There is something very wrong with this picture. The majority of these nations—including the United States, which doesn’t rank itself—don’t have much to brag about. The State Department doesn’t seem to factor into the equation that these nations are inundated with trafficked women and that organized crime is squarely behind the trade. Nor does it consider that the vast majority of the men using trafficked women either at home or outside their borders are from the same well-heeled nations sitting smugly on Tier One.

The bottom line, of course, is that back-room diplomacy plays a major role in the tier placement process. Lisa Thompson of the Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking, a broad-based coalition headed by the Salvation Army, argued that if political considerations are part of the equation, “then the process is critically flawed. It’s not about the situation in Kashmir or the tension between Palestine and Israel or all these myriad other important issues. [The TIP report] shouldn’t be used to manipulate other political debates or international relationships. Otherwise it’s a corrupt process and you might as well not bother.”

WHILE THE DEBATE ROARED ON, staff in the Office to Combat Trafficking got down to preparing the “decisive” 2003 TIP report—the one in which countries still mired on the third tier will face tough U.S. economic sanctions.

At the 2002 TIP news conference, Ely-Raphel appeared to offer a glimpse into what to expect. More diplomatic maneuvering! This time, Russia seemed to be getting primed for an elevation. For two straight years it was listed in Tier Three, and rightly so. It has a monumental trafficking problem; the level of government and police corruption, complicity and indifference is stunning. Organized crime runs the trade with virtual impunity. The Russian government turns a blind eye to girls being recruited into prostitution even at the age of fourteen! Nonetheless, Ely-Raphel credited Moscow with initiating action on several fronts:

Given the dire situation faced by trafficked women in Russia, elevating that country to Tier Two status would make a complete mockery of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.

Despite the tidal wave of criticism, U.S. State Department officials insist they are making the right moves. On June 19, 2002, Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky appeared before the U.S.

House Committee on International Relations to respond to attacks leveled at her department. Dobriansky countered that political considerations weren’t a factor in assessing whether a foreign government is complying with the minimum standards to eliminate trafficking in persons. “Many of our friends and allies are on Tiers Two and Three,” she insisted. “They simply do not comply with minimum standards.”

In response to questions about the rationale used in ranking countries, Dobriansky explained:

No one believes that the laws of a single nation can halt the huge and lucrative trade in women, which ranks in dollar terms just behind drug smuggling and black-market weapons sales. The U.S. law with its stiff economic sanctions could have gone a long way toward sparing thousands of girls from a life of sexual slavery. But the fact remains that the trafficking situation is getting worse—far worse. And while those who should know better dance the diplomatic tango, tens of thousands of innocent young women and girls are ending up as sex slaves.

The U.S. government decided it would become the world sheriff. No one forced it to take on the role. Yet ever since it strapped on its six-guns, the actions of its senior deputies have trivialized the process by rewarding recalcitrance. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act was an extraordinary opportunity to promote actions that could save the lives and health of many women and girls. That opportunity has been largely squandered.