United States Mission to the United Nations
Michael Heath
U.S. Senior Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
New York, New York
November 25, 2025
AS DELIVERED
Excellencies and distinguished guests, today we reaffirm or commitment to ending the horrific and devastating crime of human trafficking. The United States expects these multilateral forums to deliver results, not rhetoric. For this reason, the United States did not sign the political declaration associated with this event, which included topics unrelated to the actions necessary to address human trafficking effectively. Moreover, while we allowed this declaration to be adopted by consensus, the United States must disassociate itself from paragraphs two, three, five, six, and twelve. The United States has made clear that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals impinge upon state sovereignty as a soft form of global governance, and we will no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course. The Pact for the Future, the Global Compact on Migration, and the Global Compact on Refugees represent the one-world globalist approach to governance, including supranational management of U.S. border policy, that the Trump Administration has made clear the United States cannot support.
The United States is concerned that this resolution places the General Assembly out of line with the growing body of work that the trafficking community is highlighting on the risks and exploitation involved in all forms of surrogacy. The United States also rejects the terminology around “sexual and reproductive health-care” in paragraph twelve. This language is superfluous at best, but also carries highly controversial meaning, often conflating these terms with notions of abortion, LGBTQ, or other sexual rights for children. The International Conference on Population and Development and Beijing +30 Political Declarations have even omitted these controversial terms. This Declaration is an inappropriate forum to raise them. Lastly, the United States has not ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which undermines the nuclear family, weakens the importance of religious communities, and undermines natural rights and the role of parents. We reject any notion that it constitutes customary international law. Excellencies, the Trump Administration is taking decisive action to dismantle trafficking networks that threaten America’s borders and communities. We’re targeting criminal and terrorist organizations with enhanced tools and authorities to combat human trafficking. We are vigorously securing our borders, tightening enforcement of our laws, and disrupting the networks that exploit vulnerable individuals. To address the sharp growth in online scam operations, many of which use forced labor to fuel their profits and defraud Americans out of billions of dollars each year, the Trump Administration has held scam ringleaders toaccount. In the last three months alone, the United States has targeted multiple operations in Southeast Asia and China, sanctioning more than 100 targets and seizing billions in bitcoin from defrauded Americans and others worldwide. Recognizing the needs of victims, the United States is also a world leader in implementing vacatur laws, which can enable survivors to expunge certain convictions for crimes committed as a result of their victimization. More can be done to protect victims from inappropriate punishment. It is time for the United Nations to return to its core mission: taking decisive action to combat this crime – not writing overbroad declarations. We will continue to work with like-minded partners and the UN to deliver real results. Thank you.