SEVEN months after the 2019 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report was release5d giving Jamaica and other Caribbean islands a failing grade, local authorities involved in the fight against human trafficking are confident that the 2020 report will outline major improvements.

Head of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Vice Squad in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), Deputy Superintendent of Police Carl Berry, told the Jamaica Observer that his unit and other stakeholders have carefully perused the 2019 TIP report and implemented recommendations, where needed.

“The US State Department publishes the annual TIP report about activities of countries over the preceding year and they make recommendations to all countries tracked. However, within the same report there were recommendations that were made and we have been acting on them. One of the things that they asked us to do is to continue to ramp up our educational and sensitisation campaigns. Another thing is to ensure that there is standard operational procedures being used effectively by state agents. So we have actually gone over the report and the parts of the recommendations that are useful to Jamaica. We have been acting on them [and] seven months plus later we can safely say that we have even gone beyond those recommendations,” Berry said.

He was speaking to the Sunday Observer prior to National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the United States, celebrated on January 11.

In the case of Jamaica, which has a tier 2 rank, the US State Department, through the report, had said while Kingston is “making significant efforts” to deal with TIP, it still does not, however “fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.

Tier 2 countries are those whose governments do not fully comply with the 2000 US Trafficking Victims Protection Act minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

The report further stated that the efforts undertaken by the Government included investigating and prosecuting more suspected traffickers, achieving a swift conviction that included prison time, and publishing its first annual report on trafficking persons in Jamaica.

However, while the Jamaican Government increased funding for anti-trafficking efforts, the report stated that it did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas and despite increased funding, protections for victims or increased accountability for traffickers did not improve.

“The Government identified fewer victims compared to the previous year; it provided minimal services to identified victims and did not refer any Jamaican victims to shelters; and it convicted only one trafficker. Public awareness and outreach activities were ineffective in increasing officials and the public’s capacity to identify and appropriately respond to suspected cases of trafficking in their communities,” the report stated.

Following the report, Berry said a map has been developed to highlight the way forward and ensure that the JCF’s Anti-Trafficking in Persons Vice Squad executes within the objectives they have set for several years.

“There is a national plan of action and within that it is our duty to ensure that the populace, the citizens and those who visit, can visit in an environment that is safe and free from the crime of human trafficking. We will continue to be in the spaces provided and we are urging the media to highlight this because it is one of the crimes in the world that impacts every aspect of the community, every aspect of the society. It impacts the family, the persons directly, the third party individual — even the trafficker is impacted by it. But overall it impacts national security — it is a trans-global organised crime, which is very, very lucrative,” he said, adding that globally, human trafficking is a US$150-billion industry.

Berry added: “We have taken on all the recommendations that are in the report. The ones that are useful to us we have ensured that the next reporting phase we will not have those recommendations and we have even exceeded in those areas.”

Additionally, Berry said his unit, alongside other partners and stakeholders, have ramped up the national social media campaign as education is the most powerful tool in the fight against human trafficking.

“We have been engaging vulnerable populations and in October 2019 we launched the A-Tip clubs in schools. One of the recommendations is that once we ramped up our public education campaigns, we would be better placed. So one of the initiatives is to get children to be fully involved in the crime called human trafficking, to ensure that they have enough information to protect themselves,” Berry said. “The job really is for us to sensitise the entire population, what the crime rate is, what it does to people, community, societies, and can do to the national security of a particular country.”

Furthermore, the lawman made an appeal to citizens to arm themselves with knowledge about human trafficking as it impacts society at multiple levels.

“It harms individuals psychologically, financially and in several other ways. So once we ramp up, which we’re doing, our educational campaigns, we’re of the view — and this is one of the recommendation that came out of the US report — that we would be in better place to achieve a better ranking,” he said.