Washington – The Bush administration on Tuesday added seven nations, including several key U.S. allies in the Middle East, to its human trafficking blacklist for failing to halt what it called the scourge of “modern-day slavery.”
Countries on the list are subject to sanctions for not doing enough to stop the yearly flow of roughly 800,000 people, 80 percent of them female and up to half of them children, across international borders for the sex trade and other forms of forced and indentured labor.
Among U.S. friends getting a failing grade were Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, which along with Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and Malaysia joined for the first time such perennial offenders as Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria in the State Department’s annual “Trafficking in Persons Report.”
Sixteen states in all – four more than in 2006 – were given so-called Tier 3 status in the 236-page survey of global efforts to combat trafficking in people, many of whom are seeking to escape poverty in Eastern Europe and South and Southeast Asia and are sold into the commercial sex trade or manual labor or are mistreated as domestics.
Despite the additions, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said “more and more countries are coming to see human trafficking for what it is – a modern- day form of slavery that devastates families and communities around the world.”
Countries with Tier 3 ranking “do not fully comply with the minimum standards (to fight trafficking) and are not making significant efforts to do so,” which makes them eligible for U.S. economic sanctions.
Three countries that had been placed on Tier 3 in 2006 – Belize, Laos and Zimbabwe – were promoted to Tier 2 this year for improving their records, according to the report. Tier 2 countries are those that do not fully comply with minimum standards but are making significant efforts to do so.
The recognition is rare U.S. praise for Zimbabwe, long singled out by Washington for harsh criticism on its overall human rights record, a point noted by Rice’s point man on the trafficking issue, Mark Lagon.
The seven newcomers to Tier 3 were all demoted from “Tier 2 watchlist” status, which now covers 32 countries, including India, Mexico and Russia, that have been cited for poor anti- trafficking records for numerous consecutive years.
Bahrain, the Persian Gulf home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, was cited for failing to crack down on human traffickers who are bringing in men, women and children for forced labor or commercial sex work, the report says.
Malaysia made its first appearance on “Tier 3” for its failure to protect and identify victims of trafficking, many of them Indonesian domestics.
