Ambassador Luis CdeBaca serves as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State and directs the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
On New Year's Day, our nation celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. President Obama commemorated the anniversary with two Presidential Proclamations: one that celebrates the Emancipation Proclamation and reaffirms the timeless principles it upheld, and a second that declares January 2013 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month and calls on all Americans to recognize the vital role we can play in ending all forms of slavery.
President Obama referred to the Emancipation Proclamation as having "brought a new day -- that 'all persons held as slaves' would thenceforth be forever free. We wrote that promise into our Constitution. We spent decades struggling to make it real." Yet more than a century and a half later, a great deal of work still remains to fulfill the promise of freedom and restore hope to the millions who are still enslaved today.
Globally, as many as 27 million are victimized in modern slavery. This exploitation occurs every day in our cities and towns. It taints the global supply chains of the products we rely on every day. In countries across the world, it tears apart families, undermines communities, creates instability, and threatens the rule of law.
