Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank both the Government of Germany
and ODIHR for holding a valuable and well-organized
conference.
We are all aware of the egregious practice of
trafficking. It affects all OSCE states. This conference
had an interesting focus on destination countries, of
which the United States is clearly one. This illustrates
to us that this is not a problem of one region or one
part of the OSCE, but a problem we all share and on
which we all must work on together.
We have made some progress on this issue - with the
Vienna Ministerial decision committing our governments
to take steps to address the problem, as well as
projects and programs conducted by ODIHR, the Stability
Pact Task Force on Combating Trafficking in Human
Beings, and OSCE field presences. This is a good
start.
But, as the issues raised in this conference clearly
showed, it is only a beginning. It is up to our
governments to ensure that we fulfill our commitments to
(quote from the Vienna Ministerial) "take necessary
measures, including by adopting and implementing
legislation, to criminalize trafficking in human beings,
including appropriate penalties, with a view to ensuring
effective law enforcement response and prosecution. Such
legislation should take into account a human rights
approach to the problem of trafficking, and include
provision for the protection of the human rights of
victims, ensuring that victims of trafficking do not
face prosecution solely because they have been
trafficked."
As participants in the conference also pointed out,
NGOs can be our best allies on the fight against
trafficking, particularly in protecting victims. We need
to look at ways to support their work.
The issue of ensuring that international personnel do
not contribute to trafficking in countries where they
are deployed was also discussed in the conference. We
agree that this is an extremely important issue. We
support the implementation of the OSCE anti-trafficking
guidelines to help ensure that OSCE is not part of the
problem, but part of the solution.
We look forward to concrete follow-up on this
conference. It is not enough to point out the problems;
we must work together to solve them.
Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
