326 – Reading Between the Lines of the 2024 U.S. TIP Report, with Ambassador John Cotton Richmond

Ending Human Trafficking Podcast

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Ambassador John Cotton Richmond as the two discuss the 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report.

John Cotton Richmond

Ambassador Richmond is an attorney and diplomat focused on ethical business, human rights, democracy, and rule of law. He served in the country’s highest position dedicated to combating human trafficking as a U.S. Ambassador where he led U.S. foreign policy in the global fight for freedom. As a Partner at Dentons, Ambassador Richmond helps companies keep their supply chains and workforces free of human trafficking. He was named one of the federal “Prosecutors of the Year,” after a decade successfully trying complex police misconduct, cross-burning, neo-Nazi hate crimes, forced labor, and sex trafficking cases across the country. Ambassador Richmond is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, frequent expert for the United Nations, and frequent speaker on justice, freedom, leadership, faith, and vocation.

Key Points

• The TIP Report evaluates 188 countries on their anti-trafficking efforts, including prosecution, protection, and prevention, and ranks them based on their progress compared to previous years.
• The rankings influence U.S. foreign policy, with tier three countries facing sanctions. Victim identification has improved with 133,943 victims identified this year, but this number represents less than 0.5% of estimated global victims.
• The TIP Report notes a rise in identified labor trafficking victims (31% of the total), highlighting a shift from primarily sex trafficking cases. The report does not specify industries, but labor trafficking occurs in various sectors, including domestic work and agriculture.
• Although prosecutions have slightly increased to 18,074, they are still below previous highs. Convictions remain significantly lower compared to past years, indicating insufficient accountability for traffickers.
• Despite regulations, victim identification remains low due to unfunded or underfunded mandates. Improved funding and strategic resource allocation are necessary to increase victim identification and support.
• The TIP Report emphasizes both the challenges and opportunities technology presents in combating trafficking. It also highlights the importance of including survivors in anti-trafficking efforts, recognizing their unique perspectives and contributions to the fight against trafficking.

Resources

• 267- The Intersection of Business and Human Rights, with John Cotton Richmond
• 241 – Ambassador-at-Large John Cotton Richmond: Looking Forward
• 137 – Interview with Prosecutors: John Cotton Richmond & Victor Boutros
• 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report
• Atlas Free
• Libertas Council
• Everfree Freedom Life Map
• U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking
• UNODC

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14
You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. This is episode #326: Reading Between the Lines of the 2024 U.S. TIP Report, with Ambassador John Cotton Richmond. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I am so glad to welcome back John Cotton Richmond. His career has taken him to the front lines in the global battle against human trafficking. He’s been on this podcast more than anybody else. His three previous podcasts will be in the show notes, in case you want to go back and listen. Welcome back, Ambassador Richmond. Let us know what you’ve been doing these days.

John Cotton Richmond 1:24
Sandie, it’s so good to be back with you, and I’m really excited to talk about this year’s Trafficking in Persons Report. I’m currently working with an organization called Atlas Free, and they gather anti-trafficking organizations together in a network centered around a strategic framework to improve everyone’s efforts in the battle against trafficking. It’s been a delight. I’m also working on a special project I started with some friends, called the Libertas Council, which is really trying to help leaders move from just agreeing that trafficking is wrong and become champions who take action to make sure that we can do something about this crime.

Sandra Morgan 2:02
Wow, I’m actually intrigued with this idea of how we become champions that bring about action, not just aspirational motivation. Go get them. So I’m looking forward to hear more about that, but right now I know our listening audience, our community, is really interested in your take on the 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report. We’ll start with, can you give me an overall summary of your response to this year’s report? Something that you really identified.

John Cotton Richmond 2:44
I think it’s important for people to know that Trafficking in Persons Report is put out annually by the State Department, and it does many things. It includes a narrative report about 188 countries around the world and how they’re doing on combating trafficking, looking at both prosecution as well as protection and prevention, and then make some prioritized recommendations for each country. It also gives every country a ranking, tier one, tier two, tier two watch list, and tier three. Those rankings are how a country is doing compared to its own previous efforts the year before. It’s not comparing countries to each other, it’s actually just comparing a country to its own prior efforts. So if a country is improving, if they’re doing more, their ranking might go up, and if they’re doing less on this issue, it might go down. I think this year’s TIP Report captured a great deal of interesting information about how governments are doing on trafficking.

Sandra Morgan 3:43
I have a question. Those rankings, are they just for on paper, or do they have some sort of consequence, impact?

John Cotton Richmond 3:53
The rankings have a significant impact on how we carry out our foreign policy related to human trafficking around the world. Countries want to be ranked higher. That can create an incentive for them to take up the recommendations that we’ve given, but they can also act as a stick in a sense. The tier three rankings come along with sanctions. That is, a country who’s on tier three is not going to get any non humanitarian funding from the US government. Now the president, each year gets to give full or partial waivers to some countries that might be on tier three, but those waivers have not been decided yet, that will happen at the end of September. One of the encouraging things in this year’s TIP Report has to be around victim identification. We’ve been deeply concerned that victims are not getting identified, and if a victim goes unidentified, they’re not getting access to services, their traffickers can’t be held accountable. Really, we all start with can we identify the victims that are around us? The estimate from the United Nations is that there’s 27.6 million victims of sex trafficking and forced labor around the world. And this year, we got a new number from governments about their ability to identify victims, and it was 133,943 victims were identified during the reporting period. That’s the most it’s ever been. It’s up from 115,000 last year, which was our previous high. I think we can celebrate the good incremental progress that we are identifying more victims, but I think we have to do that in the context of realizing how many victims still go unidentified. Although 133,000 is an improvement from where we’ve been, that still means that we’re identifying less than half of 1% of all the victims that we estimate to exist. It’s actually .48% of the victims. So it’s incremental progress, but I think we have to look at that in light of there is so much more to do, and we need governments to do it, we need NGOs to do it, we need communities to come together and make sure that victim identification is prioritized. One thing that is also notable is that of the victims that were identified, 31% of them were labor trafficking victims. That’s much higher than we’ve normally seen. We spent a lot of time talking about the hidden crisis in labor trafficking, whereas sex trafficking victims, those cases get more attention from from prosecutors and governments, but labor trafficking victims often get left behind, and so we’re seeing an increase in the number of labor trafficking victims that are being identified.

Sandra Morgan 6:35
What industries? What does that look like? And can you parse out for us the differences in some of the labor trafficking terminology?

John Cotton Richmond 6:49
The TIP report doesn’t break that down and disaggregate the data so we know what industries that 31% of identified victims came from, but in the narratives, they talk about different forms of labor trafficking all over the world. We see forced labor as domestic workers who are isolated from communities, often far from home, and their housing, their food, and their work is all controlled by the house owner. We see it in factories, farms, front businesses like massage parlors or nail salons. You can have forced labor in virtually any industry, it’s really the traffickers decision where they want to exploit people and where the trafficker chooses to engage them in commerce. And if they’re doing that in a business, if they’re doing that in a field that’s that’s growing, agriculture, if they’re doing that in a factory that is making things, the trafficker has taken the agency away from the victim, and is choosing to engage in this economically motivated crime in virtually any industry that’s out there,

Sandra Morgan 7:50
Just locally, within two miles and 19 miles, we’ve had labor trafficking cases in the poultry processing industry, in illegal cannabis growing in empty warehouses, or at least they look empty, and yet people are sleeping there and being forced to work, and don’t even realize that there are people that would help them. I’m encouraged by the growing number of labor trafficking identifications, but I’m pretty discouraged that we’re at 0.48%.

John Cotton Richmond 8:34
Yeah, less than half of 1% are being identified. So we’ve got a long way to go, a long way to go. Another thing that was interesting this year is that we saw prosecutions rebound a bit. They’re still not up to the high of 2015 when we had 19,127 prosecutions, but we’re at 18,074, so we’re getting back up. Convictions, overall, are still way off their high of 2020 by about 25%. We’re seeing less energy put towards holding traffickers accountable, and that impunity that traffickers enjoy only means that they’re going to harm worse, more victims.

Sandra Morgan 9:16
So how are we going to light a fire under our court systems?

John Cotton Richmond 9:22
I think it’s political will. When people decide that this is an issue they care about and they let policy makers and funders know, people will pay attention. We need to make sure that police, investigators, prosecutors, social workers, victim witness specialists, everyone that’s involved in the criminal justice system, that they have the resources they need, and they have the bandwidth to go in and take care of these cases, and make sure they do it in a trauma informed and victim centered way. If we prioritize it, it will be done. And if we don’t prioritize it, we’ll continue to get the type of numbers that we’re getting. I say all that with the caveat that of course, prosecution is not sufficient. It’s not the end all, and it will not fix all the problems, but without holding traffickers accountable, we’re not going to get to a place where we’re making a dent in this issue.

Sandra Morgan 10:16
We talked before we started this interview, about the great mandated regulations, laws, but we aren’t seeing a big bump in victim identification. What needs to happen in order to see that happen?

John Cotton Richmond 10:40
I think there is a challenge of unfunded mandates, or underfunded mandates, where governments have said, “We’re tasking agencies with this responsibility to go and do something significant about caring for survivors, about doing trainings, about holding traffickers accountable,” and then they don’t have the resources that they need in order to carry out the mandate they’ve been given. I think we need to make sure that every time we ask folks to do things, that we’re giving them the resources they need to go and get it done.

Sandra Morgan 11:11
Do you have some ideas about how we can move the needle forward on funding? What is mandated? I work with a lot of students. I just came back from taking a student team to Greece. Spent four days working with our US Embassies, met wonderful people doing great work with very limited resources, and yet, then when they read about their their tier levels and things, they want to make it to a higher level, but resources are a big piece of that. How are we going to turn the tide there?

John Cotton Richmond 11:53
I think we can do it by focusing the monies that we have out there, and deciding that we’re not going to be able to prioritize everything simultaneously. There’s going to have to be some trade offs. So which things are we going to put at the top tier priority? I think human liberty ought to be at that very top tier, and say, “We’re going to fund these things,” and actually take take a significant step towards combating human trafficking, and making sure that everyone who’s trapped has a chance to become free and live out their life, and flourish in whatever their talent and desires are. But when we try to do everything all at once, we find ourselves really restricted and unable to do many things well.

Sandra Morgan 12:34
So if a task force in a big city like Los Angeles wants to make a big difference, where would they start with refining how they allocate resources?

John Cotton Richmond 12:54
I would encourage them to think through, how can we identify more victims? What would be two or three interventions to focus on where we can increase victim identification, whether it’s from hospitals or schools or through engagement with the criminal justice system, perhaps people that are already detained, figuring out where are victims? How do we have a screening mechanism that would help us identify more people, then we can give them help? But I would focus in on a couple of different interventions and push energy and resources towards them. So instead of funding 10 projects at 10% a piece, focus in on funding one or two projects at a much healthier percentage.

Sandra Morgan 13:33
That’s so wise, but so hard to do because there’s so many different voices clamoring that “My group needs this” and, “My group needs that,” and so I think it’s going to take really strong leadership that develops those goals. I do think that the TIP Report does give us some guidance in that area. One of the areas that’s become much more visible here in the US, and when I was in Europe recently, a lot of conversation was around recruiting online and the exploitation happening online. The UN, our Congress here in California, we’re all talking about technology. It’s like no one has a plan for how we’re going to consistently identify victims and do prevention. How do you feel that the TIP Report may have informed that or do you have a solution in your back pocket?

John Cotton Richmond 14:39
Well, the theme of this year’s TIP Report was technology and trafficking, both looking at how traffickers are using technology, as well as how people of goodwill who want to come alongside and help can use technology in this way. One thing that I think is important for us to realize is traffickers have always used cutting edge technology throughout the years. As soon as they can get ships’ hulls sturdy enough for Trans Atlantic travel, they were using ships to move people into slavery. When the printing press came and they begin to use printed materials in order to find and coerce victims, phone, internet, everything is the same. Traffickers are going to be using each iteration of technology to improve their illegal business model as they try to trap people, we just have to be equally responsive and find technological ways that we can disrupt traffickers work, how we can identify more victims, and how we can hold more traffickers accountable. Technology, I think, is going to be used by both sides in this battle, we just have to make sure that the people of goodwill are taking advantage of the technological opportunities out there.

Sandra Morgan 15:48
So along with technology, I’ve been privileged to sit at the table with my academic colleagues, and they are just so excited about the data that is available to mine, so it’s like the other side of the issue. I have this sense that we’re sitting in a place where research and data can inform exactly what you were talking about. If we have limited resources, how can we target two or three goals? Well, if we have more data around labor in poultry factories, then maybe we’re identifying and training people in those industries. I think that’s what I’m looking for.

John Cotton Richmond 16:51
I think it’s a great example of how data could be used, as we’re seeing other groups use technology to gather data, just about how victim services work. Everfree is developing a tool called Freedom Life Map that allows caregivers to determine, what does a survivor believe the greatest needs that they have are, and how can they tailor the care towards that? And they’re using a piece of technology to help facilitate the moving of that information. There are other examples like that, but as we gather better data, we’re going to be able to detect themes, we’re going to be able to see the trends, and we’re going to be able to help more people.

Sandra Morgan 17:29
How are we going to fund all of that research to be able to focus? Because this scarcity mentality is part of our challenge and the strategies of prioritizing and getting things moving towards one direction is helpful, but if we can’t fund the research, how do we reliably direct the limited resources that we have?

John Cotton Richmond 18:02
I’d love to think that we can have an abundance mentality instead of a scarcity mentality, and that we want to see funding come into this space, and not just from government leaders. We want to see private philanthropy step in and foundations step in, and continue to take a bigger and bigger swing at this issue. There’s a lot of opportunity to engage, tell the story of what is possible, and encourage private philanthropy to step up, as well as trying to get more appropriations through Congress.

Sandra Morgan 18:36
I like that. Okay, let’s talk about how you perceive the inclusion of survivors in this particular report. I love the survivor stories, personally, I always love those. But can you give us a little bit of insight?

John Cotton Richmond 18:55
I think this TIP report continues to prioritize survivor engagement and centering survivors in this fight. We know that people who have experienced trafficking and have had a trafficker actually take away their liberty, and control not just when they wake up, but where they work and who gets to touch their bodies, ghey look at this differently. We want to honor their experience, we want to honor their insights, we want to honor their opinions about how this work could be done. One thing that I appreciate is we obviously have the US Advisory Council, which is a group of survivors. Many other organizations have created survivor councils, have employed survivors, have moved them into leadership in the organizations, and what this gives is incredible perspective. The TIP report highlights different ways that governments around the world have tried to include survivors with a seat at the table. One thing I appreciate is whenever we get multiple survivors together, we also get disagreement. They’re smart. Their opinions vary sometimes, and they have different approaches just like the rest of us. I think it’s important not just to have one or two survivors, but to get many survivors involved and appreciate all the different perspectives that they’re going to bring

Sandra Morgan 20:09
I love that. The idea of so many different stakeholders, though, is also a lot more work for those trying to make a significant difference on the ground. What you talked about with getting us to focus on two or three priorities, we spend a lot of time trying to decide what those two or three priorities are going to be, and then we also end up with a government. We have a federal strategic plan, a state, and a county, and they may not actually converge, they may actually collide. My recent conversations, particularly with victim service providers, they’re looking for some encouragement in how we do this in this next iteration. Before the next tip report or UNODC report, how are we going to see the number of victims identified increase? What can I say to those NGO and service providers that will encourage them, because what I’m starting to see is burnout and compassion fatigue. Is there something in this report that gives a glimmer of hope?

John Cotton Richmond 21:44
I think there are glimmers of hope out there, but I do appreciate that burnout is real, compassion fatigue is real. I think people are willing to draw near to difficulty and pain if they believe that they can do something about it. And I think what we have to do is make sure we’re giving people hope that there is a possibility, there is success. I think the increased victim identification number is definitely a step in the right direction. If we can just keep increasing year after year, that will be better. I think the increased numbers on forced labor that were in this year’s TIP Report are also encouraging, that we’re identifying more people in different types of sectors. That represents a lot of work that people have put in over the last several years, and I think we can take some encouragement from that. I also think that we’ve got lots of different options for victim identification. Whether we think about education programs in schools, hospitals and staff being trained on these things, but we need to create that funnel where more and more people are doing an analysis, conducting a screening, making sure that they are engaging with people to determine if they might have indicators of human trafficking, and then they know what to do when they see those indicators. There are more and more opportunities. I think one big aspect of victim identification is to include law enforcement in that, in terms of the trainings, in terms of the funnel of victim identification.

Sandra Morgan 23:12
in your experience globally, do you have a sense that law enforcement training for victim identification has increased, or if there are things that we as a community can drive more of the will for that.

John Cotton Richmond 23:33
There have been lots of police trainings on trauma informed investigative techniques of human trafficking indicators. We need to keep doing that. Obviously, like in any government agency, people get transferred, positions change, there’s a consistent need for training. But it’s not just training about the issue, it’s training on what could specifically be done, and what do you do if you see indicators of trafficking? And how can we make sure that where we see vulnerable communities, we’re paying particular interest about seeing if people are being trafficked in those industries?

Sandra Morgan 24:07
What are some industries that we are neglecting, particularly in the labor trafficking realm,

John Cotton Richmond 24:16
I think you would have to include the agricultural industry. It’s a very difficult industry to do traditional surveillance on and gather information. The work is by definition, seasonal, and so people move very quickly. So I think agriculture presents lots of challenges for victim identification. I think domestic work also presents lots of challenges, because it is such an isolating job to do. I think you would also have to say that anytime commercial sex is being sold, there’s a huge overlap with sex trafficking, and identifying children as well as adults that are being sold for commercial sex is something that more attention should be paid to.

Sandra Morgan 24:57
Ambassador John Cotton Richmond, here’s my final question today. You’ve been on the front line of this battle for a few decades. What have you changed your mind about?

John Cotton Richmond 25:12
That’s such a good question, Sandie. I think when I first started working on this I was living in India, it felt so over whelming. When I finally got my mind around the scope and the breadth of the problem, and how complicated it was, it just felt over whelming. I think what I changed my mind about is that I no longer feel like it’s overwhelming. Instead, having seen survivors shift away from their traffickers, stand up for themselves, recover from their trauma, thrive into independence, I’ve realized that we don’t need to be tormented by the overwhelming nature of the problem, we just have to be consistently working to do something about it. I’ve seen this happen with NGOs around the world that are truly changing people’s lives. I’ve seen policy advocates trying to change systems, and making progress. We’ve seen massive changes in the law. I mean, just since 2000 we’ve seen every country in the world now, put together some sort of law that says human trafficking is illegal. What I want is, I want traffickers to feel like the wave of people coming who are committed to freedom, feels overwhelming to them. That their trafficking crime, which they’ve enjoyed as a high reward, low risk crime, shifts and becomes a high risk, low reward crime. But it’s going to take a community that is committed to doing that, that decides we’re not going to be overwhelmed by the amount of exploitation, but instead we’re going to be overwhelmed by the amount of hope that is coming into the world.

Sandra Morgan 27:01
Drop the mic. Perfect. Wow. Okay, so with that, I’m just going say thank you so much. Now for our community, our listeners, we’re inviting you to take the next step and go over to the endinghumantrafficking.org website, and you can find the links to the episodes that we mentioned. Episode #267: The Intersection of Business and Human Rights, episode #241: Ambassador-at-Large, John Cotton Richmond Looking Forward, and way back episode #137: Interview with Prosecutors. I also want to mention that you can look up the Freedom Lifemap map that Everfree is doing. We did an interview that Ambassador Richmond just mentioned as well. I hope you’ll become a subscriber, so that you’ll get an email with the show notes every time a new episode drops. We’ll be back in two weeks. Thanks, everybody.