Natural Language Translation

• The U.S. State Department has released the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for 2019 by using International Labour Organisation (ILO) data.
• India continued to be placed in Tier-2 on the country trafficking scale.

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• Around 25 million adults and children are suffering from labour and sex trafficking all over the world. In 77% of the cases, victims are trafficked within their own countries of residence, rather than across borders.
• The number of victims who were trafficked domestically was high as compared to foreign victims being trafficked in all regions of the world except Western and Central Europe, the Middle East, and certain East Asian countries.
• Victims of sex trafficking were more likely to be trafficked across borders while victims of forced labour were typically exploited within their own countries.
• The report emphasizes on the implementation of the Palermo Protocol. The countries need to build legal frameworks to punish traffickers and provide care for survivors.

Human trafficking

It is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal.

Categorisation of Countries

• The categorisation of countries is based on efforts to meet minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, not on the magnitude of a country’s trafficking problem.
• The report contains country narratives and category designations for all countries, including the U.S.
• This categorisation of countries into three tiersis based on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), U.S. legislation enacted in 2000.The three-tier system includes:
  • Tier 1 countries are those countries whose governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) minimum standards.
  • Tier 2 consists of watch-list countries, whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards and the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing; or there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year; or the determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year.
  • Tier 3 consists of those countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

India's Position

• India is placed in Tier 2. The Indian government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period.
• The report highlights efforts by the Indian government to crack down on trafficking and convicting traffickers.
• The government took some action following reports of government complicity in forced labour and sex trafficking, although the systemic failure to address forced labour and sex trafficking in government-run and government-funded shelter homes remained a serious problem. The report also highlighted the government’s failures in this regard.
• It recommended India to include amending the definition of trafficking in Section 370 of the Penal Code to “include forced labour trafficking and ensure that force, fraud, or coercion is not required to prove a child sex trafficking offence” and to establish Anti-Human Trafficking Units in all districts with dedicated funding and clear mandates.
• It also recommended India to cease forcible detention of adult trafficking victims in government-run and government-funded shelters and eliminate all recruitment fees charged to workers.