Senate president backs funding for anti-trafficking efforts
SENATE President Edith Deleon Guerrero on Wednesday expressed support for a fund award application submitted by the Pacific Ombudsman for Humanitarian Law or POHL to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime.
The application is for improving legal and specialized services to victims of human trafficking.
In fiscal year 2021, POHL was awarded $600,000. The award information can be seen at https://ovc.ojp.gov/funding/awards/15povc-21-gg-04222-ht
In her letter to U.S. DOJ, Deleon Guerrero expressed her “complete and enthusiastic support” for POHL’s latest application.
“We personally and professionally know Pamela Brown Blackburn, the executive director of POHL. We wholeheartedly trust her commitment to, and tireless efforts toward improving legal services to victims of this heinous crime,” the Senate president said, referring to human trafficking.
She said she is very aware of the threat of human trafficking to the island community. Through the outreach efforts of the POHL and other members of the NMI Human Trafficking Intervention Coalition, she said, “we recognize that the crime of human trafficking, both domestic and foreign, knows no geographic boundary.”
She said she also recognizes that “no community is immune to its disruptive, costly human impacts on the individual, community and society of our isolated insular area.”
Deleon Guerrero said POHL and its primary partner, the church-based charitable organization Karidat, are “uniquely qualified to provide the best in leadership and vision to tackle and, hopefully, begin eradicating this problem in the CNMI.”
She added, “They operate as a team providing victims of human trafficking with a safe environment to obtain both social services from Karidat and legal services from POHL. Karidat refers victims to POHL and POHL refers victims to Karidat,”
This partnership, Deleon Guerrero said, allows victims of trafficking to access social services while also receiving bilingual legal services from POHL.
“POHL’s tireless efforts to provide these services is commendable and needs to be funded in order to maintain a consistent, sustainable and highly professional organizational infrastructure and leadership. We applaud POHL for seeking all available resources to tackle this unspeakable crime. Accordingly, we offer our unqualified, full support to POJL’s application,” Deleon Guerrero said.