Survivors Leading the Way: The US Advisory Council on Human Trafficking

By Minh Dang - In the midst of one of Southern California’s worst storms in over a decade, the United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking (“the Council”) met for a strategic planning retreat. I had convinced other members of the Council and the State Department to come to California in February, since most of our meetings were scheduled in Washington, D.C.

Although California failed to extend a warm welcome for our first session, I felt immense gratitude for this group of people and for the existence of the Council. Council members are innovative, thoughtful, committed, and willing to bring their whole selves to the table. Members hail from a diversity of nationalities, citizenship status, gender identity and geographic locations. Like any other group of people, our perspectives on specific issues don’t always align. However, what is similar among all of us and is salient throughout our work is our shared and deep commitment to using our experiences and expertise to prevent the suffering of others.

In the midst of one of Southern California’s worst storms in over a decade, the United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking (“the Council”) met for a strategic planning retreat. I had convinced other members of the Council and the State Department to come to California in February, since most of our meetings were scheduled in Washington, D.C.

Although California failed to extend a warm welcome for our first session, I felt immense gratitude for this group of people and for the existence of the Council. Council members are innovative, thoughtful, committed, and willing to bring their whole selves to the table. Members hail from a diversity of nationalities, citizenship status, gender identity and geographic locations. Like any other group of people, our perspectives on specific issues don’t always align. However, what is similar among all of us and is salient throughout our work is our shared and deep commitment to using our experiences and expertise to prevent the suffering of others.

Only a year ago, a brown cardboard tube was delivered to my house addressed to “The Honorable Minh Dang.” Inside was a scroll of paper, an official certificate that declared my position as a Member of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking. This certificate, signed by President Obama, is the first item I have ever had custom framed. It hangs proudly on my wall, taking up at least 10 percent of my 200 square-foot studio.
The Council represents decades of work by community leaders, who advocated to have the voices of survivors of human trafficking in policy conversations. I personally became involved in 2012, when survivors started working with Congress to draft legislation for an Advisory Council.

After three years of advocating and organizing, in January 2015, the passage of HR 500 established the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, an institutionalized body where survivors could advise and make recommendations on federal anti-trafficking policies and programs—the first of its kind in the U.S. The Council sits in the Executive Branch of government and its primary goal is to provide feedback and consultation to the Special Policy Operating Group (SPOG) of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking (PITF).

The Council currently has 11 members, each of whom has both professional and volunteer experience working directly with survivors of human trafficking. While guided by their unique histories of being exploited, Council members are united in their commitment to ending current exploitation and preventing future exploitation of human beings. The Council issued its first report (PDF) in October 2016, mirroring four of the five committee areas of SPOG: Rule of Law, Public Awareness and Outreach, Victim Services, and Grantmaking. The SPOG’s fifth committee is on Procurement and Supply Chains. For the Council’s part, we examined and made recommendations related to labor laws, such as the involvement of survivors in anti-trafficking training for Department of Labor staff. Council members have engaged closely with federal agencies to enact some of our recommendations. As one example, we have worked with the Department of Homeland Security to provide feedback on public outreach materials for the Blue Campaign.

While all of the topics in our first report will provide context for understanding human trafficking, public awareness and outreach has the most obvious application to journalists’ work. Specifically, the Council noted the lack of diversity in depictions of human trafficking that might otherwise help to raise awareness about the issue. No groups are immune to trafficking, thus media coverage should represent all races, ethnicity, ages and genders. Further, as media look to survivors as knowledgeable sources of information, groups that have been largely overlooked in these stories—Native Americans and Middle Easterners, for example—can provide valuable insights about the fight to end trafficking.

In addition to immediate recommendations, the report includes the Council’s ideas about future collaborations. As we work with federal agencies, we are brainstorming ways to engage a wider network of survivors and to ensure the longevity of this Council (HR 500 sunsets in 2020 and will need to be reauthorized).

As a member of the Council, I am both impressed and challenged by what we face in our work. With the new Administration, we are brainstorming ways to ensure that voices are not lost, and that we maintain our strong relationships with each federal agency. For the upcoming year, our focus is on implementing our recommendations and developing strategies to ensure sustainability of the Council and our work.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are from the author and do not reflect the views of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking.

Minh Dang

By Minh Dang, minhdang8@gmail.com
Minh Dang is a San Francisco Bay Area native and two-time UC Berkeley alum, earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in social work. She is also co-principal investigator for a community-based research study, “Researcher-Survivor-Ally Formative Evaluation of San Francisco’s Anti-Trafficking Task Forces.” In 2013, she was one of 15 Asian Pacific Islander women named a Champion of Change by President Barack Obama for her work to empower survivors of slavery and human trafficking. She has served on the Board of YEAH!, The Morris Center for Healing from Child Abuse, and Annie Cannons, an organization training survivors of human trafficking to become software developers. In her day job, she is a team manager at Linde Group, an IT consulting firm in Emeryville, CA. In her spare time, Minh plays center-mid on the soccer field, is training to hike the John Muir Trail, and has an unabashed love for stationery.

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