With the release of the 2016 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report today President Obama and the U.S. State Department have once again placed politics over victims when it comes to human trafficking in several key countries.

     U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), Chairman of a House panel on human rights and author of the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which among other provisions mandates the annual world-wide trafficking assessment and ranking report, noted the experts in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons continue their excellent gathering of information, but the Administration fails to ascribe ranks and sanctions based solely on a country's human trafficking record.

    As author of the law, Smith said the Obama Administration has continued to insert political considerations in the global human trafficking grading system.

     “That violates the spirit and letter of the statute,” Smith said. “Tier rankings must be earned, not meted out as gifts to economic and security partners.”

    China, despite an abysmal record, received a Tier 2 Watch List rating. “China is the black hole of human trafficking,” said Smith. “China has the lowest number of trafficking convictions per capita, by its own government statistics convictions rates decreased 63 percent in the past six years.  In addition, China’s egregious population control policies created a demographic crisis that will drive sex trafficking for another generation; North Korea's laborers work in slave-like conditions, and a vast network of extrajudicial detention facilities feature forced labor and torture. 

     “These facts alone warrant sanctions, though they are just the tip of the trafficking iceberg in China, which also includes forced harvesting of organs from prisoners and sale of these organs,” said Smith.   “China’s record declines and, for some reason, the State Department chooses to put its head in the sand.”

     “The President continues to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the Cuban people for the sake of his fanciful friendship with the Castro brothers, whose regime benefits from the forced labor of its own medical personnel abroad, the sale abroad of Cuban blood and organs, and sex tourism,” said Smith.

     On Malaysia Smith said, “Regrettably, the Administration did not correct its egregious upgrade of Malaysia to the Tier 2 Watch List, despite Malaysia’s continued failure to convict sex and labor traffickers. Malaysia should have been judged on how well it was protecting victims by taking traffickers off the street. Instead it was given a pass last year so it could be a part of TPP, and the danger and injustice to victims continues.” Malaysia is believed to have at least two million documented and two million undocumented and highly vulnerable workers.

     Smith welcomed Thailand’s upgrade to Tier 2 Watch List, but warned, “We appreciate that Thailand has done more than most other countries in the region to change its human trafficking record, but Thailand is not yet in the clear.  Thailand’s government must follow-through with the prosecution of traffickers and continue addressing the systemic trafficking problems in the fishing industry.  There is still much work to be done in identifying and protecting victims as well.  We look forward to Thailand’s continued progress.

     “Burma's downgrade is justified and long overdue—the government was warned for the past four years that such an action was possible.  Something must be done when government officials and military leaders are complicit in forced labor, recruiting child soldiers, and pushing the Rohingya into the hands of the traffickers.”

     Responding to Uzbekistan’s downgrade to Tier 3, the worst tier on the report, Smith said, “The government of Uzbekistan openly, notoriously, and unapologetically traffics its own citizens every year in the cotton harvest; Uzbekistan's record is now accurately ranked.”

     Under the TIP report, Tier 1 countries fully meet minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking. Tier 2 countries do not meet the minimum standards but are making significant effort to do so.  Tier 2 Watch List countries do not fully comply with the minimum standards and the absolute number of victims is severe or increasing, or there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts as compared to the previous year, or the determination that a country is making significant efforts was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year.  Tier 3 countries do not meet the standards and are not making significant effort to do so.   Along with the embarrassment of being listed on Tier 3, such countries are open to sanction by the U.S. government.

     Tier 3 countries are subject to potential sanctions that include the United States using its voice and vote to deny such countries loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other multi-lateral banks, and barring non-humanitarian, non-trade related foreign assistance, as well as certain education and cultural exchange programs.

     In addition to the original 2000 law (Public Law 106-386) which provided for the annual reports, Smith wrote subsequent anti-trafficking laws, including (PL 108-193 and PL 109-164) increasing resources for crime prevention and expanding treatment assistance for victims. Smith’s newest law, The International Megan’s Law to Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes Through Advance Notification of Traveling Sex Offender, passed both houses of Congress in 2016 and was signed into law as (PL 114-119).

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