Department of State

The Office to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) within the Department of State provides the tools to combat trafficking in persons and assists in the coordination of anti-trafficking efforts both worldwide and domestically.  The TIP Office also funds projects in over 43 countries around the world in an effort to assist governments to improve their response to human trafficking.

Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons: Diplomatic and Consular Programs Funding

• Last year, Congress appropriated $4.215 million for TIP Office administration functions.
• The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (HR 3887), which passed the House last year expands the mandate of the TIP Office and increased the authorization to $6.5 million.   The office will now be required to:
• Enhance monitoring and evaluation to ensure that funds are appropriately spent.
• Be involved in corporate responsibility and coordination with USAID and be responsible for promoting, building, and sustaining partnerships between the US Government and private entities to ensure that US citizens do not use any product or material produced by slave labor.
• In order to implement existing law and meet these new mandates, the TIP Office should receive the authorized amount of $6.5 million.

Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons: Economic Support Fund (ESF) and International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) Funding

• Last year, Congress appropriated $5.95 million under INCLE for the TIP Office to award grants aimed at fighting trafficking through means such as preventative workshops, training workshops for law enforcement, and legal and strategic support in order to draft anti-trafficking legislation.
• Congress appropriated $12 million under ESF for the TIP Office to award grants to provide foreign assistance to combat trafficking.
• Jane Sigmon, Senior Coordinator for International Programs at the TIP Office said of the funding levels, “This may seem like a lot of money, but not when compared to the number of requests for funding we received this past year. In response to two grant solicitations, we received about 350 proposals requesting about $90 million. We are currently working on awarding about 55 projects. Last year G/TIP awarded about 75 projects.” (November, 2007) 
• In order to fund more programs primarily used to assist Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watch List (Countries with the most pervasive human trafficking), the TIP Office should receive the authorized amount of $30.75 million for its international programming grants.

Justification for Funding Increase:

• The G/TIP budget has been straight-lined for the past three years, despite enormous increases in global awareness  that has led to demands for U.S. technical assistance from countries on every continent.
• Pursuant to recommendations from OMB, GAO, and Congress and based on its own internal review, G/TIP has taken actions that improve the efficiency of anti-trafficking programming that has improved the process of grant-making considerably, but costs more money.
• Improvements include tying grant-making more directly to annual TIP report and targeting funding to Tier 2 Watch List and Tier 3 countries.  This allows G/TIP to use both sticks and carrots in promoting sustainable anti-trafficking strategies.  They are more effective, but more costly.
• In the 7 years since G/TIP was established, the U.S. Government has seeded the anti-trafficking field with grants and raised the standard of victim protection, which now informs more expensive grant-making strategies
• G/TIP now engages in extensive monitoring and evaluation that was not done in the early years of the program.  These activities are contributing to increasing professionalism and more effective grants, but they are add to the cost of G/TIP grant making.
• The G/TIP annual Trafficking in Persons Report is increasingly comprehensive in its coverage, including much greater coverage of forced labor slavery and increasing information on prosecution of perpetrators. 

What could G/TIP do with an increase in funding?

•  Additional resources would allow G/TIP to develop and fund more projects to combat forced labor slavery, and scale up the few forced labor prevention, protection, and prosecution programs that do exist. (There are fewer such models in the area of forced labor slavery than for sex trafficking.) 
• Increase emphasis on program monitoring and evaluation to identify the impact of programs, such as  training of law enforcement, prosecutors and judges; coordination between government agencies and NGO service providers. 
• Scale up and replicate state-of-the-art programs of victim aftercare that G/TIP has helped develop around the world.

What about anti-slavery/anti-trafficking funds utilized by other agencies, such as USAID?

•  The Action Group values all effective work to combat trafficking and modern day slavery.  We find G/TIP activities and grant-making to be more targeted towards the crime and its victims than funding under other auspices.  Much of what is called anti-trafficking programming outside of G/TIP is simply a re-naming of existing programs that are only tangentially related to trafficking.
• G/TIP has the strongest and clearest focus on the three P’s – prevention, protection, and prosecution of trafficking and modern day slavery.  Increases in these three specific areas are the most likely to make a difference in the lives of women, children and men in slavery.

The Action Group strongly recommends funding G/TIP administration functions at $6.5 million and appropriating $30.75 million for G/TIP programs administrated under INCLE and ESF.