Today, U.S. Ambassador to Romania Kathleen Kavalec and Head of the Office of the Prime Minister Mihai Alexandru Ghigiu signed the U.S.-Romania Child Protection Compact (CPC) Partnership, a historic non-binding five-year initiative to prevent child sex trafficking and forced child labor in Romania. Implementation of this jointly developed partnership will strengthen the efforts of the Government of Romania as it works with national stakeholders and civil society organizations in a sustainable, coordinated fashion to address child trafficking.
The CPC Partnership signing is the culmination of several months of discussions between representatives of the Government of Romania, the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office), which is responsible for leading the Department’s global engagement to combat human trafficking, and the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest. The Government of Romania remains a strong bilateral partner of the United States and has demonstrated efforts to combat child trafficking. Most recently, this commitment includes the creation of two national centers focused on digital child safety and combating online sexual exploitation of children, which will be supported under the CPC Partnership.
With the signing of this CPC Partnership, the TIP Office will provide up to $10 million in U.S. foreign assistance awarded to the International Justice Mission and World Vision. These organizations, along with their local subgrantees, will collaborate with relevant Romanian government agencies, including the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Family, Youth, and Equality of Opportunities, and the TIP Office to achieve the objectives of the CPC Partnership. These objectives include ensuring prevention efforts reduce the influence of risk factors and vulnerabilities to child trafficking; providing accessible protection services to child trafficking victims and survivors using a child-friendly, trauma-informed, and victim-centered approach; ensuring justice sector actors effectively investigate cases in order to prosecute and convict perpetrators of child trafficking; and promoting coordination across relevant agencies, civil society, and local communities.
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