Fiji, Moldova and Papua New Guinea failed to make significant efforts to eliminate human trafficking last year and risk losing some U.S. aid, according to a U.S. State Department report released on Wednesday.
The three slipped into the lowest ranking of the annual "Trafficking in Persons" report, which tracks forced labor and the sex trade, joining Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Kuwait, Myanmar, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria.
That classification means the United States could withhold aid that is not humanitarian or trade-related, according to the report, which covers 170 countries and ranks 153 of them on their efforts to combat what it calls "modern day slavery."
The United States estimates 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, about 80 percent of them female and up to half minors. Millions more are trafficked within national borders for labor and sexual exploitation.
"In virtually every country around the world, including the United States, men, women and children are held in domestic servitude, exploited for commercial sex, coerced into work and factories and sweatshops," Ambassador Mark Lagon said as he presented the report.
Lagon said China, which will host the Olympic Games this summer, has launched a national anti-trafficking action plan and prosecuted some traffickers but has done too little to protect Chinese and foreign victims.
The report said that a Guangdong factory licensed to make products with the 2008 Olympic logo was employing children as young as 12 under harsh conditions.
North Korean women and girls are particularly at risk, Lagon said, because when they flee from repression and poverty at home they are preyed upon by Chinese traffickers who sell them into sexual servitude as "wives" or into prostitution.
For the fourth year in a row, the report placed China on its second-lowest "Watch List" ranking of countries that deserve special scrutiny chiefly because it failed to provide evidence that it was doing more to fight trafficking.
India, another country on the "Watch List," has made some efforts on the child labor front and to rescue victims but it has weak anti-corruption efforts and prosecutes too few trafficking-related crimes.
Five countries climbed out of the lowest ranking: Bahrain, Equatorial Guinea, Malaysia, Uzbekistan and Venezuela, which is often the target of U.S. criticism for its record on drugs, human rights and terrorism.
Some countries, including Somalia, Namibia, the Solomon Islands, Turkmenistan and Tunisia, were suspected of having trafficking problems but were not ranked because of lack of sufficient information.
Source: Reuters
