By: Staff Writer
July 19, 2024
The Dominican Republic is on the Tier 2 (Watch List) in the 2024 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, released by the US State Department on Monday.
The report also 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.
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. But the Dominican Republic is on the Tier 2 “Watch list,” which is the warning signal for being upgraded to the Tier 3 Status if things do not change.
The report on the DR said: “The Government of the Dominican Republic does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. These efforts included investigating and prosecuting more alleged traffickers; increasing international law enforcement cooperation, including with Haiti; and finalizing and implementing SOPs for providing services to victims identified in border areas. The government investigated three officials for alleged complicity in trafficking crimes, and it convicted one complicit police officer and sentenced them to a significant term of imprisonment.”
The report added that the DR needs to: “Proactively and consistently screen vulnerable migrant or undocumented populations and Dominicans of Haitian descent, including those in agricultural and construction industries, for trafficking indicators and refer them to care.
“Ensure consistent and equitable screening for trafficking indicators prior to deportation.
“Amend the 2003 anti-trafficking law to remove the requirement to prove force, fraud, and coercion in sex trafficking crimes involving victims younger than the age of 18, consistent with international law.”
For the wider Caribbean and Central America the report noted that “human trafficking manifests itself differently around the world. In the Western Hemisphere – North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean – there are broad commonalities in trafficking trends countries face and how their governments and authorities approach the crime.
Criminal justice responses and definitions of trafficking are concerning across the region. Many governments have weaknesses in their legal systems and uneven judicial application of trafficking laws, including levying fines in lieu of imprisonment for trafficking crimes, imposing penalties not commensurate with those for other crimes, and failing to criminalize all forms of child sex trafficking.
“Judges, in particular, may lack adequate training in applying trafficking laws and coercive methods traffickers use, which impacts their decisions and sentences. Impunity for trafficking crimes fosters misperceptions about trafficking among both policymakers and the public. Inadequate law enforcement efforts and insufficient capacity-building for law enforcement and other first responders hinders or impacts efforts in low-capacity countries, especially in the Caribbean.
“Governments with limited resources often do not recognize or implement low-cost/high-impact anti-trafficking policies. Official complicity within law enforcement, the prison system, and local government facilitates trafficking crimes across some governments, but criminal prosecution of complicit officials lags behind the already low number of convictions of other traffickers. Child sex trafficking and extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse are also pervasive concerns, particularly due to the increased use of social media and online platforms to recruit victims.
“Many officials conflate human trafficking with other crimes, including migrant smuggling, child labor, sexual violence against children, illegal commercial sex, and illegal adoption. Because of this confusion, governments may misidentify trafficking victims, fail to give them adequate support, and therefore underreport trafficking crimes. These problems lead to inadequate data collection and reporting on human trafficking and, therefore, an incomplete understanding of the extent of the crime in the hemisphere.”