Protecting Girls' Access to Education Act

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2200) to reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the right word for the type of slavery we see today, the type of human trafficking that is slavery, is to focus on the fact that this is indentured servitude. This is human slavery, and traffickers around the world increasingly exploit over a million individuals--I am talking about women and children--in sex trafficking for commercial gain.

According to credible estimates, if we add to that those who are engaged in forced labor, that number that are actually enslaved is some 20 million. It is a coercive, multibillion-dollar industry that destroys families, destroys communities, strengthens brutal criminal networks, and tramples human dignity.

This plague is really global. It is not limited to the developing world. At a regular meeting of the Human Trafficking Congressional Advisory Committee I set up in southern California

nearly 4 years ago, I have met with brave survivors who endured forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation in my home State of California.

I think of Angela Guanzon locked into her abusive workplace, sleeping on the hallway floor. I think of Carissa Phelps being sold on the streets of Fresno at the age of 12 by a very violent pimp.

Meeting them and having them testify showed me and many others that the horror of trafficking lies not in statistics, but in stolen lives. In the words of the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, enslavement is such an affront to human conscience that, in his words, `` . . . to expose it, is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.''

Exposing the harsh reality of human trafficking to international daylight is a central tenet of the legislation here that we are reauthorizing today.

In the late 1990s, under the leadership of Congressman Chris Smith, the author of today's bill, the Foreign Affairs Committee initiated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which became law in 2000. That law created the annual Trafficking in Persons Report and the country tier rankings that put the issue on the radar screens of world governments for the first time and every year thereafter.

I was proud to have supported that legislation. It created the possibility of sanctions against the worst offenders. It also established law enforcement and other domestic initiatives to combat trafficking within the United States, which have been refined in the multiple reauthorizations that have followed.

The law has produced notable successes. More than 120 countries, in fact, have now enacted antitrafficking laws, and many are improving their prosecution and conviction of those who are involved in trafficking. Countless lives have been improved and have been saved as a result.

In the TIP Report released 2 weeks ago, 27 countries were upgraded to a higher tier, and that is progress. But sustained pressure and scrutiny are needed. Enacting a law is not the same thing as enforcing it, and, unfortunately, 21 countries slipped to a lower tier in last year's report.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 2200, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act, which continues and updates our fight against human trafficking. It extends until 2021 the current authorizations for our international and domestic programs, which expire at the end of September. It also contains multiple reforms and refinements to U.S. programs, and it strengthens the annual TIP Report and tier rankings.

I am pleased that this bill incorporates the text of a bill of mine, H.R. 1625, the TARGET Act, which I introduced earlier this year and the House passed in March. This important provision turns the tables on international traffickers by authorizing the State Department to offer and publicize bounties for their arrest and for their conviction.

I again want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass) for introducing this strong, bipartisan bill. I also want to thank the other seven committees of referral for the input and assistance they provided on the portions of the bill within their jurisdiction.

H.R. 2200 is a critical contribution to the cause of human freedom and the cause of human dignity. It deserves our unanimous support.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Committee on Foreign Affairs,

Washington, DC, July 10, 2017.

Hon. William M. ``Mac'' Thornberry,

Chairman, House Armed Services Committee,

Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Thornberry: Thank you for consulting with the

Foreign Affairs Committee and agreeing to be discharged from

further consideration of H.R. 2200, the Frederick Douglass

Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization

Act of 2017, so that the bill may proceed expeditiously to

the House floor.

I agree that your forgoing further action on this measure

does not in any way diminish or alter the jurisdiction of

your committee, or prejudice its jurisdictional prerogatives

on this resolution or similar legislation in the future. I

would support your effort to seek appointment of an

appropriate number of conferees from your committee to any

House-Senate conference on this legislation.

I will seek to place our letters on H.R. 2200 into the

Congressional Record during floor consideration of the bill.

I appreciate your cooperation regarding this legislation and

look forward to continuing to work together as this measure

moves through the legislative process.

Sincerely,

Edward R. Royce,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). He is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, and, of course, he is the author of the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act. He is also the author of this bill today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman

from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would just mention, Mr. Speaker, that 20 years ago, human trafficking was unknown, I think, to most Americans and there was little public awareness of the severity of what we are calling here today modern-day slavery.

Seventeen years ago, Congress led on this issue by passing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. We had very strong bipartisan support, and the rankings, the sanctions, the programs created by that law have been instrumental in building the momentum and awareness that exists out there today. And with each reauthorization, those laws have been fine-tuned, they have been strengthened. This bill continues that tradition. It is time to recommit ourselves to this noble fight against slave-like labor and sexual exploitation of underage children.

I have asked some of the victims why it is that so many of these criminal gangs move from drug running and other kinds of activity into this kind of behavior, and part of the response is: Because, you know, in a drug war, a gang member can get himself killed, but it is a lot easier to exploit a 14-year-old underage girl, it is a lot easier to be in that kind of business than it is in the more dangerous business.

We have got to overcompensate for this reality by passing legislation which allows these additional tools to be used to close down these criminal syndicates and to create real deterrence for those gang members who consider going into this line of work.

So I thank Mr. Smith, Congresswoman Karen Bass, and all my fellow cosponsors on this bill. It deserves our strong support.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman Ed Royce for yielding. I thank him for his leadership on trafficking, for this bill in particular, for the markup, and for all of the assistance he provided. I also thank Eliot Engel, our ranking member. I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

I want to thank Karen Bass, the lead Democrat on the bill, for her exceptional leadership and her collaboration on this legislation.

I want to thank Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McCarthy. I have to say--and I have been working on human trafficking since about 1995, chaired probably more than 30 hearings and written four laws--I have never seen such a deep commitment to fighting trafficking and protecting victims

than our leadership. It is unparalleled and it is inspired.

Kevin McCarthy helped ensure timely consideration. There are eight committees of referral. Sometimes that is a death knell for any bill. It is so hard to secure agreements and vote them out. Well, each of those chairmen and their staffs worked diligently and in good faith. At the end of the day, the leadership was there. They had our back on the legislation.

I want to thank Chairman Royce, again, for his extraordinary leadership as well.

Mr. Speaker, ever since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 became law in 2000, combating human trafficking has been a major priority in the United States and, indeed, globally.

Over the last 17 years, police and civil society organizations--many of them faith based--have identified and rescued more than 250,000 victims worldwide. Some put that number at close to 300,000. Prosecution of traffickers in the U.S. has increased by more than 500 percent, but, frankly, our task is far from accomplished.

The International Labor Organization suggests that nearly 21 million people in the world today are enslaved, most of them women and children. That is unconscionable. Every human life is of infinite value. We have a duty to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from harm.

The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2017 is comprehensive. It is bipartisan, and it is designed to strengthen, expand, and create new initiatives to protect victims, prosecute traffickers, and prevent this cruelty and exploitation from happening in the first place.

Title I of the bill focuses on combating trafficking in the United States. Title II focuses on the world. Title III authorizes appropriations of more than half a billion dollars over 4 years, including reauthorization of the TVPA of 2000.

The legislation, Mr. Speaker, is named in honor of the incomparable Frederick Douglass on the eve of his 200th birthday. Born a slave in 1818, he escaped when he was 20 and heroically dedicated his entire life to abolishing slavery and, after emancipation, to ending the Jim Crow laws in order to achieve full equality for African-American citizens. A gifted orator, author, editor, statesman, and Republican, he died in 1895.

Human trafficking, Mr. Speaker, is modern-day slavery that needs a Herculean effort to eradicate.

Among its numerous provisions and one that is of special interest to the Frederick Douglass Family Initiative--and we worked very closely with them on this--it authorizes HHS grant money to ``establish, expand, and support programs'' to provide age appropriate information to students all across America to avoid becoming victims of sex and labor trafficking as well as to educate school staff to recognize and respond to signs of trafficking.

It adopts a number of best practices, like for example making sure that when government employees book rooms, that we utilize hotels where they have initiated efforts and sponsored training to eradicate child sex trafficking. We do the same thing with airlines. The flight attendants--Delta is a classic example--once trained, can spot trafficking in progress, inform the pilot, and when that plane lands or jet lands, ensure that if there is a situation, there is an arrest of the traffickers and a rescue of the woman or children who are being trafficked.

We will now try, to the best of our ability, to hold the airlines to account. There needs to be reporting. It is already the law that they should provide this training. Now we want to ensure that training actually happens.

Chairman Royce talked about the TIP Report. Just a couple weeks ago, Secretary Tillerson announced the 2017 TIP Report. It is a voluminous and very accurate report about what is happening in 190 countries around the world, including the United States. Those countries that are designated Tier 3, egregious violator, are subject to sanctions.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to commend the Trump administration for finally holding China to account as a Tier 3 violator. A worst offender.

The pending bill makes a number of important reforms to the TIP Report and how it is prepared. My hope is that we will have an even better, more accurate, and more effective effort at holding countries to account.

Again, this legislation applies to the United States for labor and sex trafficking as well as to the world. Again, I do want to thank all those who have been involved in it.

Let me just say we worked on this bill for well over a year with ATEST; Polaris; IJM; World Vision; United; Humanity; ECPAT; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Shared Hope International; CATW; Ambassador Swanee Hunt; the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which provided valuable insight; and others. They were all very much a part of our effort.

I also want to thank critical staff, including Luke Murray and Kelly Dixon, from the Majority Leader's Office, who are outstanding--they get the job done, and they ask all the right questions about substance and process and helped us along--Doug Anderson, counsel of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Mary Noonan; my chief of staff, Piero Tozzi; Allison Hollabaugh; Krystal Williams, Karen Bass' staff member; and so many others on the committees that also made such a huge difference in enabling us to get this through all the committees to the floor today.

I urge my colleagues to pass the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2408) to enhance the transparency, improve the coordination, and intensify the impact of assistance to support access to primary and secondary education for displaced children and persons, including women and girls, and for other purposes.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to recognize Congressman Steve Chabot and Congresswoman Robin Kelly on the Foreign Affairs Committee for their work on this important issue of protecting girls and protecting their access to education, especially in vulnerable settings.

We all know that education is a critical driver of upward social mobility for these young girls, for economic growth, for overall stability in terms of a society. As we confront an increasing number of conflicts around this globe, education has got to remain a very key component of U.S. foreign assistance.

Around the world today, there are 27 million children who are out of school in conflict zones. Half of all children in refugee camps do not have access to primary education.

With many recent conflicts that have lasted, now, a decade, we are now seeing entire generations of children that fail to receive even the most basic education; and even if they are eventually able to return home, they carry back those deficits in terms of what they have not learned, and those deficits can last a lifetime. So this is a humanitarian crisis with real strategic implications.

In Syria, for example, an estimated 4 million children are out of school in an environment warped by constant violence. Refugee children outside of Syria are placing tremendous strains on the educational systems, and I have seen this in countries like Jordan, in Lebanon, in Turkey.

As we have seen in crisis situations around the world, the lack of stable educational opportunities make these children more vulnerable: more vulnerable, especially for girls, to exploitation; more vulnerable, especially for boys, to radicalization.

Girls face unique barriers to education in conflict zones. In these afflicted countries, girls are 2\1/2\ times more likely than young boys to be out of school. They frequently encounter cultural barriers that prevent them from seeking an education, and they often lack safe routes to that little school and back home from that school.

Promoting girls' access to education reduces their risk of falling victim to gender-based violence or to early marriage or to human trafficking. It is also the just thing to do.

H.R. 2408, the Protecting Girls' Access to Education in Vulnerable Settings Act, authorizes the State Department and authorizes USAID to enhance existing education programs for displaced children and to especially be engaged with girls.

The bill calls on the State Department and USAID to coordinate efforts with the private sector as well, with civil society groups, with multilateral organizations, to collect relevant data to improve the effectiveness of these programs that we are engaged in.

Finally, the bill would require that the State Department and the USAID include data on education programs for displaced children in any report to Congress on disaster relief and recovery efforts so that we are aware that they are engaged in addressing this issue.

We must strengthen the role of education in humanitarian assistance. Refugees and other displaced persons live on a knife edge of despair. Without access to education, children in conflict zones, especially girls, are more exposed to violence, to exploitation, and even to radicalization.

By helping to realize their innate potential, education gives these children hope, hope for today, and it gives them critical skills for tomorrow so that they can contribute to their homes, their communities, and so that they can contribute to the next generation. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), who is on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and is the author of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we are surrounded here by former teachers today who have brought this bill, who have worked with us to bring this bill to the House floor, and we understand their impulse to reach out to these young children and try to see to it that they have an equal chance out in the world.

This is something that teachers do, and this focus on young girls, especially young girls in the most vulnerable situation, as a result of conflict in those regions making them at risk for trafficking, for exploitation or being child brides, these former teachers understand the importance of having a program directed specifically to this problem.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot); the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Kelly.); certainly, Albio Sires, our ranking member on the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee; and Ms. Ros- Lehtinen, of course, as chairman, for helping to ensure that international humanitarian efforts are prioritizing this issue of access to education for girls.

By improving coordination between the State Department, USAID, the private sector, and multilateral organizations, what this bill is going to do is to improve the chances that these young lives will be able to blossom above the ashes of war, above these conflicts that rage in these spots around the world, so that they might reach their full potential. If they do, they will be able to help the next generation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask every Member for their support, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2200, a bill to reauthorize $130 million in currently appropriated funds in order to continue, over the next 4 years, critical and necessary work to fight sex and labor trafficking. This bill builds upon the remarkable work of the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the cornerstone of Federal human trafficking legislation.

I want to thank my colleagues Chairman Royce and especially Chairman Chris Smith for his pioneering leadership.

Despite great strides and the tremendous progress we have made in exposing and beginning to understand the complexities and growing obstacles of human trafficking, we still have much to do.

I am particularly thankful for the inclusion of my language in section 103, which provides a modification to grants for victims services in order to provide a necessary focus on young victims in the child welfare system. Specifically, this section will amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to address a key reason children and women have difficulty leaving their exploiter: the lack of housing. They have nowhere to go.

As with all antitrafficking measures, I am particularly concerned about what we are doing to combat the devastating epidemic of young girls in the foster care system falling prey to child exploitation and sex trafficking. The average age of a girl entering into sex trafficking is 12 years old.

In 2016, an estimated one out of six endangered runaways reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children were likely child sex trafficking victims. Of these reported victims, 86 percent were in the care of social services or foster care when they ran.

One seasoned detective in Los Angeles recently reported during a demonstration on law enforcement technology used to identify victims that every single girl he has ever encountered through sex trafficking or commercially exploited sex activity has been in the child welfare system.

It cannot be overstated that the purpose of the child welfare system is to protect children who are abused or neglected. It is our responsibility to make sure these children do not fall between the cracks. It is devastating to know that we have failed many of them.

Just as if one of our own children in our family went missing, a child that is under the care of the government that goes missing demands our most aggressive response and effort to find, save, and protect them.

Our most urgent priority should be disrupting the child welfare-to- trafficking pipeline and finding better, more effective ways to meet the critical needs of this vulnerable population. In particular, as we continue to tackle child sex trafficking in the United States, it is imperative that we provide a special focus on the immediate and long- term housing needs of at-risk foster youth. Young girls and disconnected youth have particular and sensitive needs as trafficking victims.

Current funding for housing and shelter for victims of child sex trafficking is insufficient to meet the growing demand for youth services, especially young foster girls exploited through their emotional and financial vulnerabilities. At every level of government, we have an urgent responsibility to shut down pathways for child sex trafficking and to invest in critical housing needs for vulnerable youth and girls. This responsibility includes supporting and adopting

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), who is the ranking member on the Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Gabbard).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Beatty).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Frankel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the author of this important legislation, Mr. Chris Smith; and I thank Chairman Royce for bringing it to the floor. I support this bill and I encourage my colleagues to do so as well.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back that balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this measure, and I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our chairman on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, and our ranking member, Eliot Engel, as well as the authors of this bill, Mr. Chabot of Ohio and Ms. Kelly of Illinois. Both of these Members have worked hard on the bill to expand access to education around the world. I agree with them that this is an important priority for our foreign policy.

When children are able to get basic education, it pays massive dividends down the road. Those girls and boys grow up with great opportunity, and they play a bigger role in their economies and their communities.

We have seen research that, when children can learn about certain issues like nonviolent civic engagement, support for violence drops. That adds up to stronger and more stable countries and better partners for the United States.

Children belong in a classroom, Mr. Speaker, no matter where they happen to be born, but in too many places, that access just doesn't exist. What happens then?

We know in places like the Middle East, in north Africa, violent extremists are happy to fill in the void, to recruit and indoctrinate the next generation with their hateful and violent ideology. This problem is especially acute among refugees of displaced populations.

Mr. Speaker, 3.7 million schoolchildren under the U.N. refugee agency's mandate have no school to go to. Some countries are trying to tackle this challenge, like Lebanon, where the government has taken steps to enroll Syrian refugees in schools, but the need is just too great. Out of 500,000 school-age refugees, nearly half are out of school.

This bill aims to help address those really desperate situations. It calls for the USAID to ramp up access to these children, and particularly young girls. It will help us gather more data to assist government and NGOs that are also grappling with this problem, and it authorizes the Secretary of State and the USAID Administrator to prioritize this issue, to work with multilateral organizations, and to seek out partners in the private sector and civil society that will bring innovative new approaches to expanding access to education. This bill will put more young girls in the classroom in places around the world where this help is badly needed. I am glad to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Frankel), my colleague on the Foreign Affairs Committee and a real champion for women and girls.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am also a former certified teacher, and expanding access to education is critical in combating terrorism. When we increase opportunities through education, we help more girls and boys by giving them the tools to think critically and resist those who mean to harm us. We are helping to give these children an alternative with the possibility of positioning them to make further positive impact on their communities and their countries.

Time and time again we have seen the results of what happens when children are not provided a better path: extremism, radicalism, and terrorism.

This is one of our best opportunities to provide a more safe and secure world not only for them, but also for us, too.

Mr. Speaker, again, I thank Congressman Chabot and Congresswoman Kelly for their hard work. I support this bill, and I urge all Members to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.