Ambassador Luis C.deBaca (ret.) on the 13th Amendment and the History of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act

Thomas Thurston talks with Ambassador Luis C.deBaca (ret.) on the 13th Amendment and the History of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act

Ambassador (ret.) Luis C.deBaca coordinated U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery as head of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons during the Obama Administration. As one of the United States’ most decorated federal prosecutors, Ambassador C.deBaca investigated and prosecuted crimes of human trafficking, immigration, hate crimes, money laundering, and official misconduct. He updated the post-Civil War statutes and the 13th Amendment to develop the “victim centered approach” to modern slavery, which has become the global standard for combating human trafficking through the Trafficking in Persons Protocol to the United Nations’ Organized Crime Convention. Ambassador C.deBaca advises governments, businesses, and civil society on transparency in supply chains and enforcement. He is a Open Society Human Rights Fellow and is on the faculty of Yale University, where he is the Robina Fellow in Modern Slavery at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition of the MacMillan Center.