WASHINGTON, DC, United States (CMC) — Three Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries have been listed in the top tier of the 2024 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, released by the US State Department on Monday.

The report said that governments in The Bahamas, Suriname and Guyana have fully met the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to identify and help individuals who may have experienced trafficking.

At the same time Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines have remained in Tier 2.

Tier 2 means these countries are not fully meeting the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

In addition, countries are placed on Tier 2 in situations where the estimated number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing, and the country is not taking proportional concrete actions.

In addition, there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, including increased investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of trafficking crimes, increased assistance to victims, and decreasing evidence of complicity in severe forms of trafficking by government officials.

No Caricom country is listed on Tier 3, where governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

However, the report noted that French-speaking Caricom country of Haiti, which has been without an elected president since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021, and where criminal gangs are engaged in attempts to overthrow the Government, has been placed under the heading “Special Case” along with Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

The report did not elaborate on that category.

Human trafficking include sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.

It is also defined as the recruitment, harbouring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labour or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

In his remarks at the launch of the report, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said human trafficking is a stain on the conscience of society.

“It fuels crime, corruption, and violence. It distorts our economies and harms our workers. And it violates the fundamental right of all people to be free,” he said, noting that around the globe an estimated 27 million people are exploited for labour, services, and commercial sex.

The US official said that through force, fraud, and coercion, they are made to toil in fields and factories, in restaurants and residences and that traffickers prey on some of the world’s most marginalised and vulnerable individuals, profiting from their plight.

Blinken said that the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report provides the world’s most comprehensive assessment of this “abhorrent practice, as well as efforts by governments and stakeholders around the globe to combat it.

“By measuring progress in 188 countries — including the United States — we are advancing President Biden’s commitment to prevent trafficking, prosecute perpetrators, and protect survivors.”

But he said even as the resource covers long-standing forms and methods of trafficking, it also examines the growing role of technology in both facilitating exploitation and countering it.

Blinken said digital tools have amplified the reach, scale, and speed of trafficking. Perpetrators, he said, use dating apps and online ads to recruit victims, saying they use online platforms to sell illicit sexual content and leverage encrypted messaging and digital currencies to evade detection.

“At the same time, technology is also one of our most powerful tools to combat this enduring scourge. Mobile phones, social media platforms, and artificial intelligence make it possible for advocates and law enforcement to raise greater awareness about the rights of workers and migrants, locate victims and perpetrators of online sexual exploitation, and analyse large amounts of data to detect emerging human trafficking trends,” he said.

Blinken said that as technology makes it easier for traffickers to operate across geographies and jurisdictions, countries committed to rooting out this horrendous crime can and must work together and coordinate efforts.