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Countries are ranked by the degree to which their governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards.
See explanation in the Notes below the table.
NOTES:
The data is from the Trafficking in Persons Report 2011, issued by the State Department's Office To Monitor And Combat Trafficking In Persons.
TIER 1
Countries whose governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act's (TVPA) minimum standards.
TIER 2
Countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA's minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
TIER 2 WATCH LIST
Countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA's minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards AND:
- 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; 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 future steps over the ?next year.
TIER 3
Countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.
Under the UN's Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (the Palermo Protocol) and the TVPA, people may be trafficking victims regardless of whether they were born into a state of servitude or were transported to the exploitative situation, whether they once consented to work for a trafficker, or whether they participated in a crime as a direct result of being trafficked. At the heart of this phenomenon are the myriad forms of enslavement - not the activities involved in international transportation.
Major Forms of Human Trafficking Include:
Forced Labor
Also known as involuntary servitude, forced labor may result when unscrupulous employers exploit workers made more vulnerable by high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption, political conflict, or cultural acceptance of the practice. Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, but individuals also may be forced into labor in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labor, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited as well.
Sex Trafficking
When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution - or maintained in prostitution through coercion - that person is a victim of trafficking. All of those involved in recruiting, transporting, harboring, receiving, or obtaining the person for that purpose have committed a trafficking crime. Sex trafficking also can occur within debt bondage, as women and girls are forced to continue in prostitution through the use of unlawful "debt" purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment, or even their crude "sale" - which exploiters insist they must pay off before they can be free. It is critical to understand that a person's initial consent to participate in prostitution is not legally determinative: if they are thereafter held in service through psychological manipulation or physical force, they are trafficking victims and should receive benefits outlined in the Palermo Protocol and applicable domestic laws.
Bonded Labor
One form of force or coercion is the use of a bond, or debt. Often referred to as "bonded labor" or "debt bondage", the practice has long been prohibited under U.S. law by the term peonage, and the Palermo Protocol requires its criminalization as a form of trafficking in persons. Workers around the world fall victim to debt bondage when traffickers or recruiters unlawfully exploit an initial debt the worker assumed as part of the terms of employment. Workers also may inherit debt in more traditional systems of bonded labor. In South Asia, for example, it is estimated that there are millions of trafficking victims working to pay off their ancestors' debts.
Debt Bondage Among Migrant Laborers
Abuses of contracts and hazardous conditions of employment for migrant laborers do not necessarily constitute human trafficking. However, the imposition of illegal costs and debts on these laborers in the source country, often with the support of labor agencies and employers in the destination country, can contribute to a situation of debt bondage. This is the case even when the worker's status in the country is tied to the employer in the context of employment-based temporary work programs.
Involuntary Domestic Servitude
A unique form of forced labor is the involuntary servitude of domestic workers, whose workplaces are informal, connected to their off-duty living quarters, and not often shared with other workers. Such an environment, which often socially isolates domestic workers, is conducive to nonconsensual exploitation since authorities cannot inspect private property as easily as they can inspect formal workplaces. Investigators and service providers report many cases of untreated illnesses and, tragically, widespread sexual abuse, which in some cases may be symptoms of a situation of involuntary servitude.
Forced Child Labor
Most international organizations and national laws recognize children may legally engage in certain forms of work. There is a growing consensus, however, that the worst forms of child labor, including bonded and forced labor of children, should be eradicated. A child can be a victim of human trafficking regardless of the location of that nonconsensual exploitation. Indicators of possible forced labor of a child include situations in which the child appears to be in the custody of a non-family member who has the child perform work that financially benefits someone outside the child's family and does not offer the child the option of leaving.
Anti-trafficking responses should supplement, not replace, traditional actions against child labor, such as remediation and education. When children are enslaved, however, their abusers should not escape criminal punishment by virtue of long-standing administrative responses to child labor practices.
Child Soldiers
Child soldiering is a manifestation of human trafficking when it involves the unlawful recruitment or use of children - through force, fraud, or coercion - as combatants or for labor or sexual exploitation by armed forces. Perpetrators may be government forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to be used as combatants. Others are unlawfully made to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Young girls can be forced to marry or have sex with male combatants. Both male and female child soldiers are often sexually abused and are at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.
Child Sex Trafficking
According to UNICEF, as many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade. International covenants and protocols obligate criminalization of the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The use of children in the commercial sex trade is prohibited under both the Palermo Protocol and U.S. law as well as by legislation in countries around the world. There can be no exceptions and no cultural or socioeconomic rationalizations preventing the rescue of children from sexual servitude. Sex trafficking has devastating consequences for minors, including long-lasting physical and psychological trauma, disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, unwanted pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and possible death.
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