Here's How Countries Fare on Combating Human Trafficking

Take a look at this map to see what countries are doing to address human trafficking

A new report by the U.S. State Department lays out which countries are adhering to U.S. guidelines on Human Trafficking. The report divides the world into three tiers: those who fully meet minimum standards outlined in The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) for addressing human trafficking, those who don't fully meet the standards but who are making an effort to combat trafficking, and those who are not meeting the standards and are not making an effort to do so. 

Human trafficking is the coercion of others to perform sex work, involuntary servitude or forced labor. A widespread form of modern-day slavery, victims are often smuggled across borders to work for nothing, though many are enslaved without migration. 

It's an international problem that ruins the lives of thousands of women, children and men. In 2016, over 66,000 victims of trafficking were identified by the 2017 U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report, but many more victims than this suffer in silence. Trafficking tears families apart and distorts nations' economies. Some governments are now beginning to address the crisis by adhering to the TVPA. 

Check out the map above to see what countries are doing the most and least to address human trafficking.

The TVPA defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as:

1. Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or

2. The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. 

Here is more information on the categories: 

Tier 1
The governments of countries that fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

Tier 2
The governments of countries that do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

Tier 2 Watch List
The government of countries that do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards, and for which:

a. the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing;

b. there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, including increased investigations, prosecution, and convictions of trafficking crimes, increased assistance to victims, and decreasing evidence of complicity in severe forms of trafficking by government officials; or

c. the determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional steps over the next year.

Tier 3
The governments of countries that do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

Source: 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report, State Department

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