Empty Promises to Women: Overturn TVPRA

The administration just can't keep its hands off USAID funding.

First it was reinstating the Global Gag Rule, and barring what NGOs could say or advise women on regarding abortion. Then it was sex workers in the crosshairs of USAID funding restrictions, and effective HIV/AIDS prevention programs are suffering with the "Trafficking Prevention Reauthorization Act."

Do we really want to be that nation, the one who withholds money from HIV/AIDS prevention because we feel the need to take some perceived moral highground on sex work? Because, really, that's all TVPRA is. It's dressed up as an anti-trafficking initiative but--wait for it--provides no funding for actual prevention of trafficking. It just stops NGOs from working with sex worker unions or community groups. It is brutally unfair to women who really are suffering from trafficking in the sex industry than telling them the United States is serious about ending trafficking and then holding out little but empty promises like TVPRA.

For my final project in public policy I wrote an analysis of TVPRA and advocated for its hasty removal. I'll be posting it in parts.

Executive Summary

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Congressional leadership have an opportunity to significantly increase the impact of U.S. foreign aid on the global AIDS crisis by overturning the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) attached to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding in 2008. At present, TVPRA ties the hands of any non-governmental organization conducting HIV/AIDS programs abroad by forcing them to adopt government-mandated language condemning sex work, curtailing effective programs that could protect thousands of people from acquiring HIV/AIDS next year.
TVPRA should be overturned because it denies funding to effective programs, places unconstitutional restrictions on US non-governmental organizations, tarnishes the image of the U.S. as a leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and is counter-productive to its stated goal of actually decreasing trafficking in women.