The United States government annually publishes its Trafficking in Persons Report. The Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Cindy Dyer, speaks to reporters at a Foreign Press Center’s briefing. Excerpts by United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU:
Overview
Yesterday, Secretary Blinken released the State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report, or TIP Report, as it colloquially known, which examines government efforts to meet the Trafficking Victims Protection Act minimum standards to combat human trafficking using a three-P framework of prosecuting traffickers, protecting victims, and preventing the crime.
Now in its 24th year, the report continues to reflect the U.S. Government’s commitment to global leadership on this key human rights, law enforcement, and national security issue. This year is particularly special as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Trafficking in Persons Heroes program. Yesterday we recognized the new TIP Report Heroes from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cuba, Iraq, Kenya, Mali, the Philippines, Serbia, Spain, and Suriname. The honorees will engage with communities and organizations that are committed to ending human trafficking across the entire United States through the U.S. State Department’s International Visitors Leadership Program.
The theme of this report, as you may have seen, examines the challenges associated with digital technology and how it has created new opportunities for traffickers to exploit individuals for profit. It also focuses on how technology can be used by the global anti-trafficking community in prevention and mitigation efforts, and strategies to counter nefarious actors. The report further explores opportunities for partnership across public and private stakeholders.
Traffickers use and abuse online platforms to recruit, groom, defraud, coerce, and exploit victims, taking advantage of the potential for anonymity offered by online spaces. At the same time, when harnessed effectively, digital technology can strengthen our anti-trafficking response, providing opportunities for stakeholders to strengthen prevention efforts, protect victims, and partner with survivors and other stakeholders to combat the crime.
Cross-cutting issues
Beyond highlighting the global effects of the use and abuse of digital technology, this year’s TIP Report elevates important cross-cutting issues, including the balancing of prosecution, protection, and prevention priorities in criminal justice responses; the intersection between forced marriage and human trafficking; and forced labor in Cuba’s labor export program. We also highlight key trafficking issues in the Western Hemisphere to help focus the anti-trafficking efforts of governments and other stakeholders.
Unprecedented irregular migration affects many Western Hemisphere countries, including the United States. We encourage governments to prevent trafficking and to prioritize screening among migrants, who often assume debts to pay migrant smugglers and are then vulnerable to trafficking when they are unable to repay that money.
This year’s report assessed 188 countries and territories, including the United States. Upgrades and tier maintenances in the report are based on increasing government efforts that have yielded concrete, positive results. Downgrades reflect decreasing efforts, often including systemic gaps caused by a lack of training by law enforcement, weak victim identification and referral procedures, and gaps in comprehensive services, all of which impede critical prosecution and protection efforts.
Governments as part of the problem
Unfortunately, some governments are part of the problem. This year, the Secretary determined that 13 countries exhibited a policy or pattern of trafficking. Belarus rejoined this list, and Sudan was newly added to the list. In addition, for the fifth year in a row, the department assessed 11 countries as having a government policy or pattern and retained them on Tier 3. This would include Afghanistan, Burma, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Democratic Republic of Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan.
Troubling trends
The 2024 TIP Report also documents emerging global trends. One troubling trend highlighted in this year’s report is the coercive or fraudulent recruitment of fighters for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian authorities, middlemen, private military companies, or Russian-affiliated forces reportedly used coercion, deception, and in some cases force in the recruitment of foreign nationals.
Another trend includes the continued growth of forced labor in online scam operations. We noted that these centers, which were previously mostly located in Southeast Asia, have expanded to other countries. Traffickers have certainly leveraged economic hardships and increased global youth unemployment to exploit thousands of adults and children in the multibillion industry in these online scam operations. We will certainly continue to engage governments and authorities on the importance of proactively identifying and assisting victims, and protecting people from fraudulent recruitment scams like these.
On a more positive note, global law enforcement and victim identification data demonstrates that many governments are making improvements to their anti-trafficking response. Overall, law enforcement and victim identification data increased across the 2024 TIP Report; total prosecutions and convictions were up overall; and victim identifications reached the highest number ever. For the third consecutive year, there was notable progress to address labor trafficking, which is something we have constantly raised.
Iraq on Tier 2
This year, Iraq was upgraded to Tier 2, which of course is a great sign. It indicates that there was increasing efforts, but that there is still work to be done. Specifically, the efforts that we identified in this year’s report include the government investigating and prosecuting significantly more trafficking crimes, convicting more traffickers, assigning specialized judges to preside over trafficking cases, and increasing personnel for the ministry of interior’s anti-trafficking department, including female police officers.
The government also drafted, finalized, and disseminated official standard operating procedures, SOPs, which are used for victim identification and referral for services. We – these were released for law enforcement and first responders, and they trained officials on how to utilize those SOPs, including those investigative judges, who remain the sole officials able to officially identify a victim, so that training of those judges was incredibly important.
The government also identified significantly more victims and opened a specialized trafficking shelter for male victims. And we all know that male victims are often left out of access to services. This male-victims shelter is located in Baghdad, and there is an additional shelter for female victims in – I do not know how to pronounce the name of this, but I bet you do, sir – Diwaniyah.
The KRG separately reported law enforcement data for the first time in the – in five years. And they also identified more victims compared with the last two reporting periods. And finally, the government drafted and enacted implementing regulations for the anti-trafficking law, which provided the relevant member ministries detailed roles and responsibilities.
Of course, as with all Tier 2 countries, there are areas for improvement. We identified in this year’s report that the government did not meet the minimum standards in a few areas. Number one, the government did not report efforts to address reports of official complicity. This is a concern that we track. Sometimes it is very hard to hold your own colleagues accountable, and we identified the lack of an ability to address official complicity, including officials who allegedly exploited children with alleged affiliation to ISIS and their families in sex trafficking in exchange for civil documentation that would be required to receive government services.
Despite the increased training that we did point out, investigative judges still often have limited knowledge of the issue of trafficking. They still, though, retain sole authority to formally identify victims and then refer them to services, and so this can be a challenge that we have identified. We are also noting that, in some cases, authorities did not proactively identify victims among vulnerable populations, which results in inappropriately penalizing victims who may have been forced to commit criminal offenses as a part of their trafficking. And this focus – you’ll note that this is actually something that we’ve noted across the report as we’re increasingly focusing on making sure that victims are not inappropriately penalized for crimes that they were forced to commit as a part of their trafficking. We saw this particularly in Iraq with prostitution violations or immigration violations.
And we also noted that there was a lack of services and assistance for some vulnerable communities such as the LGBTQI community, who lacked services.
All countries that – the only countries that go on Tier 1 are the ones that meet all the minimum standards. So by definition, Tier 2 countries do not meet all the minimum standards, but they are making efforts to do so. And you bring up a really good point. We assess this information and we obtain information not only from government officials – that is a primary source of information, but that’s not exclusive; we also receive critical information from NGOs, from civil society actors, from international organizations. And we obtain this not only with our staff in D.C., but also with the staff at post in Iraq. And we do it over the whole year. And yes, we flag areas for improvement, such as in the complicity, such as in better training for those investigative judges. But we’re looking at all three of the Ps as the TVPA requires us to do. So we’re looking at the prosecution numbers, the protection, and the prevention. Our best assessment, after looking at all the information that we were able to receive, was that Iraq deserved to be upgraded to the Tier 2. Again, that was our – that’s our best assessment based on all the objectives and looking across the full spectrum that we’re required to do for the TVPA.
North Korea
We recognize that individuals from North Korea are exploited in many situations. You accurately pointed out the situation of the PRC in China. We also know that individuals from North Korea are exploited actually across the whole – the entire world. I believe that in this year’s report, we noted in 19 different country narratives that there were exploitations of North Korean workers. I know especially we do note it occurring in the PRC.
I know you may have seen some of the reporting from the Outlaw Ocean Project. We’ve talked about and had a really compelling segment on North Korean workers exploited in the seafood industry in the PRC. We also are noting that in addition to exploiting North Korean workers, we are targeting and capturing information regarding forced labor of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other vulnerable groups in the PRC. We noted an increase in labor transfers in the Xinjiang region in particular as well as exploitation of PRC nationals in the Belt and Road Initiative, which we highlighted in 16 different narratives.
With regard to what is the U.S. doing about this, one of the things that we’re doing is publishing this report to increase awareness and really increase a thorough account of information, because it is occurring not only in PRC but also in those 19 other countries. So we are hoping to raise awareness of this issue through our Trafficking in Persons Report. We are also actively engaging – to your good point about this occurring in the PRC, my office and the State Department is part of the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, where we are implementing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act so that we are adding entities who are engaging in forced labor and making sure that those goods don’t come into the U.S. market. We are also engaging with our industry partners, trying to hold and trying to encourage industries and companies to keep an account of their own supply chain.
And I think the other thing that the U.S. is doing is aggressively following our federal acquisition regulation to make sure that we, as the U.S. – and we buy a lot of things – to make sure that we are not accidently purchasing goods made with forced labor, specifically forced labor of North Korean individuals. So those are just I think some of the things, and we’re really trying to present this holistic effort to address this really serious problem.
AI and victims of trafficking
I think that we are tracking that traffickers are super clever, and they are using digital technology, including AI, in each of the three prongs of what is required to commit trafficking. So one, in the recruitment, we are seeing the use of digital technology because they are posting what looks like a legitimate job offer on social media sites or on other sites where they are luring and recruiting victims using the digital technology. Secondly, the Palermo Protocol requires that there be some sort of a means: a force, a fraud, a coercion. They are similarly using digital technology to coerce victims. Sometimes it may be through sextortion where they obtain a picture or a video of the victim, and they threaten – if you don’t give me more, if you don’t do these things, then I’m going to release this. And so they’re using digital technology in the means of it. And then third, we know that Palermo requires the purpose; the purpose is exploitation.
I think a perfect example of how digital technology and AI is being used as the ultimate purpose of exploitation is these on-land – online scam compounds where individuals are literally trapped in these compounds and forced to scam individuals either through romance scams, cryptocurrency scams, and that’s actually the purpose and the type of exploitation. So it is used across all of it.
But I have to end on a more positive note. I really believe strongly – and this as a former prosecutor and someone who worked at a shelter – I really think that our anti-trafficking stakeholders can similarly utilize digital technology to help us capture these bad guys, prove that the crime has occurred, identify the financial and fraudulent transactions, and use it and beat them at their own game.
