On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released the State Department’s 10th Annual Trafficking in Persons Report, a 373-page document which outlines the prevalence of global trafficking and assesses the world’s effort to implement procedures of prevention, protection, and prosecution. In the report, countries are ranked in tiers based on their adherence to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards of monitoring and combating human trafficking. The United States took its first ever ranking this year, although Hillary Clinton wrote in an introductory letter that this ranking was not accorded as “a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America.” The countries that appeared on the tier placement list were divided into three tiers. Tier one countries are countries “whose governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards,” while tier two countries “do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.” Additionally, there is a tier two watch list for countries that fit in the tier two guidelines, but have seen an increase in severe forms of human trafficking over the past year and have failed to show significant evidence that they have increased efforts to combat trafficking over the past year. Tier three countries “do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.” The United States and other countries such as Croatia, Colombia, Spain, and Poland, all have tier one rankings. Afghanistan and Iraq are both on the tier two watch list, while countries such as Cuba, Congo, and Iran are tier three. The report found that 5,606 incidents of human trafficking were prosecuted globally in 2009. This is an increase from last year’s 5,212, which had been the lowest number since reporting began in 2003. Of the 5,606 prosecutions, there were 4,166 convictions, an increase from last year’s 2,983 convictions.
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