[JURIST] Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the Department of Justice [official website], announced [press release]on Thursday, that the Department of Justice will fund a 44 million dollar grant to fight human trafficking me. The funds will support the actual fight against human trafficking, support victims, and expand research for human trafficking. One of the grants is 23 million dollars for 16 groups the work together to combat human trafficking. Attorney General Lynch stated “The Enhanced Collaborative Model works through an idea that we all recognize, that we are all more effective when we are able to work together.” The new grants are part of the a larger plan [PDF] made in January 2014 to address human trafficking in the United States.

Approximately 36 million people in the world live in a form of modern slavery [JURIST report], the Global Slavery Index (GSI) [advocacy website] reported [text, PDF] in November. For the purposes of the study, GSI defined modern slavery as involving “one person possessing or controlling another person in such as a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal.” Human trafficking[JURIST op-ed] plays a prominent role in supplying the labor in modern slavery. HRW in May called on the Thai government to authorize a UN-assisted inquiry into human trafficking [JURIST report, press release] in Thailand. In March UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an end to modern slavery and human trafficking [JURIST report] during remarks at the unveiling of The Ark of Return, Memorial to the Victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Earlier that month, UN human rights expert Maria Grazia Giammarinarourged the Malaysian government to make improvements to its efforts to combat human trafficking [JURIST report]. In August, Kenya’s parliament passed a law providing greater support to victims of human trafficking [JURIST report]; the law will also make it easier to secure convictions for perpetrators.