Remarks at Swearing-in Ceremony

It is a joy to be with all of you today. People I love. People I respect. Leaders in the movement to end modern-day slavery who are the eyes and ears, feet and hands of an indomitable force. Colleagues, from offices past, who helped me look good. And people I’ve already come to depend on in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

I have my big-hearted and bold wife, Susan, to thank for so many things. I wouldn’t be a practicing, confirmed Christian if not for her. She cautions against focusing too much on ideological abstractions, and has long reminded me that living a good life requires doing real, tangible good for particular people. Few jobs are as animated by this wise counsel as the effort to help rescue women, men, and children from enslavement.

Elena, my multi-talented 14 year old daughter, is very morally inclined and religious, like her mother. I’m very happy to be working on an issue that has captivated the most important women in my life. That they approve so deeply helps with the sacrifice of hours away from them at the office or abroad.

It is a great blessing to be allowed the chance to benefit the lives of the most degraded, most exploited, most dehumanized people in the world.

Although I’ve been on the job less than five weeks, my life has already been deeply changed.

Last week in Southeast Asia, I met Aye Aye Win, a young Burmese woman who dared to search for work beyond her own tortured country. A recruiter painted a beautiful picture of work in a neighboring country. Aye Aye assumed substantial debt to cover up-front costs required by the recruiter for this job placement.

Together with some 800 Burmese migrants, many children, Aye Aye was "placed" in a shrimp farming and processing factory. But it wasn’t a job. It was a prison camp.

The isolated 10-acre factory was surrounded by steel walls, 15 feet tall with barbed wire fencing, located in the middle of a coconut plantation far from roads. Workers weren’t allowed to leave and were forbidden phone contact with any one outside. They lived in run-down wooden huts, with hardly enough to eat.

Aye Aye is a brave, daring soul. She tried to escape with three other women. But factory guards caught them and dragged them back to the camp. They were punished as an example to others, tied to poles in the middle of the courtyard, and refused food or water. Aye Aye told me how her now beautiful hair was shaved off as another form of punishment, to stigmatize her. And how she was beaten for trying to flee.

Beaten. Tortured. Starved. Humiliated. Is this not slavery??

Out of this heartless story are several strong positives.

First, the shelter where I met Aye Aye is a wonderful place. It is fully funded by the Government of Thailand. Around the world, there are far more shelters and programs to serve victims of human trafficking, many run by faith-based organizations.

Second, Aye Aye was rescued in a raid led by Thai police. Raids such as this one were unheard of just 4 or 5 years ago.

It is never negotiable to treat people as less than human, as property. Brick kiln slave laborers in India or China are not disposable, they are people.

Central American girls sexually consumed by predatory tourists are not disposable, they are people.

South Asian domestic servants abused in the Persian Gulf are not disposable, they are people.

Child soldiers in Burma and Uganda are not disposable, they are people.

American citizens exploited in prostitution in Las Vegas, are not disposable, they are people.

What "happens" in these places does not "stay" in these places. It is a stain on humanity. Every time a woman, a girl, a foreign migrant is treated as less than human, the loss of dignity for one is a loss of dignity for us all.

The lessons we have learned about the brutality of sex trafficking around the world apply equally to the prostitution of women and girls in the U.S. A 14 year old girl, arrested in a vice raid five blocks from here, is, by law, a victim of human trafficking, not a criminal.

And I pledge to fight labor trafficking with the same focus and diligence as we confront sex trafficking. What’s most discouraging about the shrimp factory from which Aye Aye Win was rescued, for example, is that it’s fully operational today.

Typically, labor trafficking violations, around the world, are not fully criminalized but are considered civil, regulatory offenses. That’s not right.

Fighting human trafficking is intimately connected to this agenda. On one hand, to fight human trafficking we must pass and implement good laws. We must investigate, prosecute, convict, and severely punish traffickers. And we must replace corruption with rule of law so that officials "on the take" don’t enable those exploiters.

On the other hand, as my valued friend Michael Horowitz has said to me, fighting human trafficking is essential to democracy promotion. By confronting the fact that the vast majority of trafficking victims are women and girls, and by ending this servitude, we strengthen democracy.

Democracy cannot flourish without the voice of half of humankind. Human trafficking represents the antithesis of the women’s empowerment needed to make democracy whole.

Trafficking in persons is nothing less than modern-day slavery. It shouldn’t be regulated or merely mitigated; it must be abolished. The exploited should be treated as victims to be helped, not as criminals. And the exploiters must be stigmatized, prosecuted, and squeezed out of existence.

A movement of faith-based groups, feminists, government officials, legislators, international agencies and brave individual advocates have closed ranks to do so. Thank you for having faith in my ability to contribute to this movement.

May God bless our efforts.