Southern Baptist ethics leader Richard Land is part of a diverse coalition calling on United States senators to pass improved legislation to combat human trafficking.
Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, is one of 150 people — from conservative Christians to liberal feminists — who signed on to a letter by the National Black Leadership Roundtable urging senators to support legislation already passed by the House of Representatives.
The House approved the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, H.R.3887, in December 2007 with a 405–2 vote.
The legislation "will rescue millions of enslaved girls, women and children within our borders and throughout the world," according to the letter to senators.
The bill’s adoption "will allow the United States to combat modern-day slavery with an effectiveness comparable to [19th-century] efforts to end the chattel enslavement of Africans," the letter to members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees said. "The parallels between both efforts are made clear by the fact that [African-Americans] and Latinos are those most victimized by domestic traffickers, and by the fact that today’s traffickers inflict their harm on those who are most vulnerable: young people of color, often immigrants, often children, almost always women, almost always poor."
About 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year, according to the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
This does not include millions of victims who are trafficked within their own national borders, the office says.
About 80 percent of the transnational victims are females, and up to 50 percent are minors.
The data show the majority of those trafficked across international borders are victims of commercial sexual exploitation. (BP)
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