The United States remains actively committed to combating human trafficking at home, and working bilaterally and multilaterally with other governments. We appreciate the active interest of Member States to work collaboratively to put and end to what is a modern-day form of slavery. From the United States' perspective, the Protocol to Prevent , Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, deserves much credit for over 150 new or amended pieces of legislation, and an increase in trafficking convictions from 2800 in 2003 to 3400 in 2007. That said, much work remains to be done to increase the number of prosecutions of traffickers coupled with appropriate punishments, provide needed protection and assistance to trafficking victims, and scale up efforts to combat demand for victims of sex and labor trafficking.

This new resolution acknowledges the need for broad international cooperation between Member States, international organizations, civil society, and businesses to effectively combat human trafficking. It also welcomes the progress achieved at the 4th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, where a new anti-trafficking working group was established to advise both the COP and UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on approaches to enhancing implementation of the Trafficking in Persons Protocol. We encourage all Member States to participate in this important body as nothing prohibits non States Parties from attending the COP. We must continue to bolster the efforts of the COP in its role as the guardian of the TIP Protocol.

The United States believes that the way forward in the fight against trafficking in persons is through emphasis of three premises:

First, we must foster support for regional plans of action to implement the Trafficking in Persons Protocol such as that of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Regional plans of action can effectively address the trafficking trends and challenges that are unique to individual regions.

Second, we should concentrate on strengthening policy and programmatic coordination efforts of the Inter-Agency Coordination Group (ICAT), taking into account the comparative advantages of the relevant agencies.

Finally, the United States believes that any further discussion within the UN General Assembly on the advisability of a global plan of action should not begin until the background paper on this issue is compiled by the Secretary General. This background paper needs to include input from all relevant stakeholders including the working group on trafficking recently established by the UN Conference on Parties to the Transnational Organized Crime Convention. We regret that explicit reference to the Conference was omitted from the resolution given the Conference's treaty-based mandate to promote effective implementation of the UN Trafficking in Person Protocol in accordance with Article 32 of the Convention. Furthermore, it is our view that a global plan of action could prove overly broad and divert limited resources of the UN and smaller member states from the key tasks at hand, which are, respectively, to improve coordination among UN agencies through ICAT, and implement national laws pursuant to the UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol.

Thank you, Mr.Chairman.