About Our Program

The Rebecca Project for Human Rights (RPHR) is a transformational organization that advocates for justice, dignity and reform for vulnerable women and girls in the United States and in Africa. We believe that women and girls possess the right to live free of gendered inequity and sexual and physical violence; to heal from the injuries of violence, trauma and addiction. We believe that investment in their leadership creates healthy, safe, and strong communities.

Transforming Trauma Into Leadership
Sacred Authority

Advocacy to Change Laws
Anti-Shackling Coalition
Empowering Girls
Girls Initiative Africa Project

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Girls Are Not Commodities FAIR Girls, GEMS, Polaris Project, Rebecca Project for Human Rights & 52 of our partners, 51 Attorneys General and 36 prominent clergy have called on Village Voice Media to shut down the adult section of it's website, Backpage.com

Executive Director, Imani Walker
Receiving BET Award

Imani Walker Photo

3 AM Girls: Lisa Ling Goes Undercover

Imani Walker Photo Tina, a former teenage sex worker who escaped the world of pimps and their girls, and Lisa go undercover in Washington DC to witness the "rules of the streets" and see if they could identify any young, missing girls.
Our Articles:

US LAW ENFORCEMENT 'FAILING' ON CHILD PROSTITUTION
by Sima Kotecha, Newsbeat US Reporters

American law enforcement agencies are being accused of not doing enough to combat the problem of child prostitution.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States estimates that between 100,000 and 300,000 American children are forced into prostitution every year - sometimes through being kidnapped near their homes.
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REBECCA PROJECT IN NEWSWEEK

The Super Bowl of Sex Trafficking
by Michelle Goldberg
January 30, 2011

While football fans are eagerly anticipating the Feb. 6 Super Bowl showdown in Dallas, some state officials are gearing up for the big game’s dark side: the surge in human trafficking that tends to accompany major sports and entertainment events. “What we’ve learned is that sexual trafficking, sexual exploitation of children in particular, is all about supply and demand,” says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. With more than 100,000 fans descending on Dallas, that demand is going to be great. There is a “looming potential explosion of human trafficking around the Super Bowl,” says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is expecting hundreds of girls and women to be brought to the area.
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REBECCA PROJECT IN O MAGAZINE

Taking a Stand Against Sex Trafficking
by Jessica Stockton Clancy
January 25, 2011

The founders of the Rebecca Project help vulnerable women and girls speak truth to power.

Sitting in her Washington, D.C., office last spring with two victims of sex trafficking, Malika Saada Saar could barely believe what she was hearing. "They described how they had been sold on Craigslist," says Saada Saar, founder of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights. "At that moment, I committed to do everything I could to end this." In the months that followed, the Rebecca Project arranged for victims to speak before members of Congress, meet with the vice president and attorney general, and write open letters to Craigslist's founder. By fall the site's lucrative "adult services" section had disappeared.
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REBECCA PROJECT ON ABC NEWS

Craigslist: Site for Sex Slaves?
Two Victims Take Out Advertisement to Plead for Craig's Help

by David Wright, Lisa Jones and Xorje Olivares
August 10, 2010

In the adult section of the popular website Craigslist, it looks as though the world's oldest profession has met up with modern technology, with a number of women offering companionship for a certain price.

But are all the femme fatales featured online consenting adults, or sex slaves?
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In Recognition of Violence Against Women's Awareness Month
In her book Unbowed, Kenyan Nobel Prize Laureate, Dr. Wangari Maathi, shares the story of when she and other mothers demanded that the Moi government end the systematic disappearance of dissenters, so many of whom were their beloved

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News & Research

Contact Your Congressman

Write and urge your Congressman/Congresswoman to include funding for child victims of domestic sex trafficking in the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).

DOWNLOAD THE LETTER
Rebecca Project in Essence Magazine
Work & Wealth Imani Walker, Cofounder and Executive Director, featured in Essence Magazine, Work & Wealth: The Power List.
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The Outsourcing of Tuskegee 2
Nonconsensual Research Part 2
Download the report (PDF)
The Outsourcing of Tuskegee
Nonconsensual Research
Download the report (PDF)
Mothers Behind Bars
Mothers Behind Bars Report Cover Download the report (PDF)
Rebecca Project Updates
O Magazine

REBECCA PROJECT IN
O MAGAZINE

Taking a Stand Against Sex Trafficking
by Jessica Stockton Clancy
January 25, 2011

The founders of the Rebecca Project help vulnerable women and girls speak truth to power.

Sitting in her Washington, D.C., office last spring with two victims of sex trafficking, Malika Saada Saar could barely believe what she was hearing. "They described how they had been sold on Craigslist," says Saada Saar, founder of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights.
Read the article...

PRESS HIGHLIGHTS

ABC's Good Morning America

ABC covers Craigslist's decision but reports adult services ads are still active around the world and have migrated to free areas on Craigslist U.S.