Trafficking in persons is a global problem and millions of adults and children around the world are trafficked due to the rising demand for cheap labor and prostitution. Winrock acknowledges that it works in environments that are at a high risk for trafficking in persons and is taking steps to prevent it from occurring in our own work and in any of our work with local partners.
Winrock aims to avoid, prevent and detect any trafficking in persons associated with the provision or procurement of supplies or services under any U.S. government contract, grant or cooperative agreement, as well as to promptly address any allegations received. Click here for Winrock’s guidance for complying with USAID anti-trafficking provisions.
All Winrock representatives, including international and domestic, regular full-time and part-time staff, interns, contractors, and volunteers, are responsible for promoting respect for fundamental human rights, social justice, human dignity, and the rights of all people to exist free from fear and stigma. In connection with these principles, Winrock maintains a zero-tolerance policy for sexual exploitation and abuse of the populations it serves by any Winrock representative. Reports of trafficking may be made under the Winrock Reporting policy (above) or to Global Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-844-888-FREE and its e-mail address at help@befree.org.
Employees shall not engage in any acts that directly support or advance trafficking in persons, in the performance of any contract, grant or cooperative agreement anywhere in the world, whether as a prime contractor, prime recipient or subcontractor, or sub-recipient, including:
Prostitution means procuring or providing any commercial sex act and the “practice of prostitution” has the same meaning.
Sex trafficking means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.
Sexual exploitation is defined as any actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential power, or trust, for sexual purposes, including but not limited to profiting monetarily, socially or politically from the sexual exploitation of another.
Sexual abuse is defined as the actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature, including inappropriate touching, by force or under unequal or coercive conditions.
Trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion; of abduction, fraud or deception; of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of an individual under the age of 18 for the purpose of exploitation is considered trafficking in persons, even if none of the means listed above (force, coercion, abduction, etc.) are involved. Therefore, minors in prostitution are considered trafficking victims; by definition they cannot have consented to be prostitutes.
Coercion means threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against that person; or the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
Debt bondage means the status or condition of a debtor arising from a pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or of those of a person under his or her control as a security for debt, if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined.
Forced labor means knowingly providing or obtaining the labor or services of a person by threats of serious harm to, or physical restraint against, that person or another person; by means of any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause the person to believe that if he or she did not perform such labor or services that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process.
Involuntary servitude includes a condition of servitude induced by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that, if the person did not enter into or continue in such conditions, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
Commercial sex act means any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.
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