Human trafficking is a Clinton priority

Jim Wallis brings to our attention Hillary Clinton's answer to a confirmation hearing question from Barbara Boxer:

As Secretary of State I view these issues (human trafficking) as central to our foreign policy, not as adjunct or auxiliary or in any way lesser from all of the other issues that we have to confront. I too have followed the stories: this is not culture, this is not custom, this is criminal … I’ve also read closely Nick Kristof’s articles over the last many months on the young women he’s both rescued from prostitution and met who have been enslaved, tortured in every way: physically, emotionally, morally and I take very seriously the function of the State Department to lead the U.S. Government through the Office on Human Trafficking to do all that we can to end this modern form of slavery. We have sex slavery. We have wage slavery and it is primarily a slavery of girls and women.

Domestic policy must then be made to match foreign policy, and in domestic policy, the U.S. is no leader. Sweden is, as Ambassador Swanee Hunt and Lina Sidrys observed:

After years of parliamentary debate, in 1999 Swedes passed the Sex Purchase Law, which criminalized buying and decriminalized selling sex. This placed the emphasis on the buyers, while allowing women to seek help without being fined or deported. In five years, the number of prostituted women in Sweden dropped 40%. Today, the government estimates that less than 400 women are trafficked into the country, while in neighboring Finland it’s 17,000.

In rough economic terms, as a matter of domestic policy the Swiss attacked demand, rather than supply.

It works. Together with a foreign policy focus like the one Secretary of State Clinton can be expected to pursue, church and other nonprofit efforts, it should work very well indeed.