The University of British Columbia’s Benjamin Perrin is available to comment on the U.S. State Department’s “Trafficking in Persons Report” which will be released by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington tomorrow, June 4, at 10:00 am (EST).
UBC Faculty of Law Asst. Prof. Perrin is one of Canada’s leading experts on human trafficking.
The U.S. State Department’s eighth annual report assesses the efforts of 170 countries to protect and assist traffic persons, prosecute offenders and prevent this crime. For the first time, the report will also evaluate how nations are preventing and prosecuting child sex tourism.
The full text of the U.S. State Department report will be available for downloading from www.state.gov shortly after Rice’s briefing.
Perrin says that while in the past Canada has met the report’s minimum standards, there are serious gaps. For example, Canada has not prosecuted a single person for the crime of human trafficking during the period covered by the report.
Perrin is a former Senior Policy Advisor to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and founder of The Future Group, a non-governmental organization that has worked since 2000 to confront human trafficking. He has appeared as an expert witness before several Parliamentary committees studying the problem and regularly comments in local, national and international media on the topic.
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