Santa Clara Law’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) is proud to announce that it has been prominently cited in the recently released Federal Strategic Action Plan on Services for Victims of Human Trafficking in the United States. The Strategic Action Plan was developed by the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which is comprised of seventeen federal agencies including the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State. The Federal Action Plan, which lays out the process by which these federal agencies will ensure that human trafficking victims receive adequate services, incorporates comments submitted by multiple civil society groups, though the IHRC is the only law school clinic quoted in the report.
The IHRC submitted comments in May 2013, based upon significant research by IHRC students into local efforts to combat human trafficking in the Bay area. Under the supervision of Clinical Fellow Britton Schwartz, fourteen IHRC students interviewed key actors in the anti-trafficking movement in Santa Clara and Alameda Counties, including Santa Clara Law’s own Professor Lynette Parker and Professor Ruth Silver-Taube. Prof. Schwartz adapted the students’ findings into a comment letter that was submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide recommendations for the final version of the Federal Action Plan. The Plan reflects the IHRC’s general comments and recommendations, and prominently highlights the following citation on page 37:
“The public benefits available to a human trafficking victim may vary on a case-by-case basis. Due to the complexities in meeting the eligibility requirements for these programs, victims are generally unable to obtain public benefits on their own. Legal aid providers and victim services agencies help trafficking victims access public benefits and meet their basic survival needs, but they often lack the funding and staff capacity to fully meet this need.” – Santa Clara University Law School
The IHRC hopes that the federal government will take swift and concrete action to implement this important guidance document to ensure that victims of human trafficking receive the services and support they desperately need. Santa Clara University’s School of Law has a long history of working on behalf of human trafficking victims through its clinical programs, and the IHRC is delighted to have contributed to this important step forward in the fight to address human trafficking here in the United States.
