Human trafficking victims suffer because governments lag behind. On Thursday, the US Department of State published its annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP report), and the facts should shock us all. Traffickers operate with impunity, forced labor sustains global supply chains, predators rent children for commercial sex, and governments fail to implement strong enough action plans, laws, and treaties to stop them.

One of the most glaring examples of governments’ poor performance is the egregiously low number of victims governments identify—a problem I routinely faced over the last two decades working on this issue as a federal prosecutor, nongovernmental organization leader, and US ambassador. The United Nations (UN) Protocol to Combat Trafficking in Persons is one of the most widely subscribed instruments of international law, under which governments commit to identifying the people whom traffickers exploit. According to the latest TIP report, however, governments around the world reported identifying only 115,324 human trafficking victims in the last year. This number comes from data governments provide to the US State Department about the number of victims whom law enforcement or nongovernmental organizations identify and who receive protection services. Although this number is higher than last year’s number, it is slightly lower than the high of 118,932 victims identified in 2019.

Read the full article below by: Cotton Richmond

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