WASHINGTON, United States (CMC) – The United States Department of State has listed several Caribbean countries in its 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report.

It stated  that “trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” are umbrella terms, often used interchangeably, to refer to a crime whereby traffickers exploit and profit at the expense of adults or children by compelling them to perform labour or engage in commercial sex.

“When a person younger than 18 is used to perform a commercial sex act, it is a crime regardless of whether there is any force, fraud, or coercion involved,” the State Department said, adding that Washington recognises two primary forms of trafficking in persons, namely  sex trafficking and forced labour.

In its report, the State Department has placed The Bahamas, Guyana and Suriname in Tier 1 which it said are those “whose governments fully meet the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Belize, Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago have all  been placed in Tier 2 ” whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards”.

St Lucia and Barbados have been placed in Tier 2 Watch List “whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards (with certain exceptions), and for which 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”.

Saint Maarten, Venezuela and Cuba have been placed in Tier 3 “whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.”

The State Department also listed Haiti, along with Libya, Somalia and Yemen in the “Special Case” category.

The State Department said the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as amended (TVPA), defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as 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; or 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.

The State Department said more than 180 countries have ratified or acceded to the United Nation Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (the UN TIP Protocol), which defines trafficking in persons and contains obligations to prevent and combat the crime.

The report says the TVPA directs the US Secretary of State to consider, as proof of a country’s failure to make significant efforts to fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards, adding that governments on Tier 3 may be subject to certain restrictions on foreign assistance, “whereby the president may determine not to provide US government nonhumanitarian, nontrade-related foreign assistance as defined in the TVPA”.

The report states that the US president may also determine to instruct the US executive director of each multilateral development bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to “vote against and use their best efforts to deny any loans or other uses of the institutions’ funds to a designated Tier 3 country for most purposes.