Guyana has been removed from the Tier Two watch list in the U. S. State Department’s report on Trafficking in Persons, and is now just on the Tier Two list. Government believes that its protest of Guyana’s 2010 Tier Two watch list ranking has paid off.
The report, released on Monday, June 27 by U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said the Guyanese authorities do not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of this scourge, but are making significant efforts to do so.
“Officials achieved an important milestone during the year — the first conviction of a trafficking offender — and there was new information that some public servants, including mining officials, made efforts to try to rescue potential victims,” the report pointed out.
But, according to the report, this progress could be threatened by the government’s continued denial of the widespread nature of TIP, poor victim protection, and lack of action against official complicity in human trafficking.
The report stated that cases of human trafficking within the country during this reporting period mostly involved women and girls in situations of forced prostitution, and Guyanese citizens were even subjected to forced prostitution and forced labour in other countries of the region.
“People in domestic service in Guyana are vulnerable to human trafficking, and instances of the common Guyanese practise of poor rural families sending children to live with higher- income family members or acquaintances in more populated areas sometimes transforms into domestic servitude,” the report outlined. It further listed other vulnerable groups as women in prostitution, children working in hazardous conditions, and foreign workers.
Penalised
But a serious accusation is that victims of this horrendous act “face disincentives to self-identify to authorities, due to fear of retribution from trafficking offenders, fear of resettlement to abusive home situations, fear of arrest, and lack of awareness that human trafficking is a crime.”
According to the report, there is evidence that some victims were penalised for crimes committed as a direct
Human Services and Social Security Minister Priya Manickchand
result of being in a trafficking situation. The report, quoting ‘local observers’, noted that other potential victims may have been sent to the juvenile detention centre and/or being arrested and charged with “wandering” as a result of their trafficking experience.
The U. S. State Department said Guyana made limited progress in holding local human trafficking offenders accountable during the period under review. Despite the passage of the Combating Trafficking of Persons Act of 2005, which prohibits all forms of trafficking and prescribes sufficiently stringent penalties, ranging from three years to life imprisonment, only four new TIP investigations were initiated in 2010.
“Authorities initiated two new prosecutions against sex trafficking offenders as compared to the previous reporting period, during which authorities did not initiate any new prosecutions,” the report added. It also mentioned the sloth of the judicial system – an issue that government had been raising time and again. It noted that tempts made by the Human Services and Social Security Ministry to strengthen prosecution of traffickers by hiring private attorneys to serve as special prosecutors in trafficking prosecutions.
The U. S. State Department report stated that Guyana has, also, again made “little progress” in protecting victims as well as implementing measures to prevent new occurrences. It said that officials of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, upon finding children working in the mines, ordered the operators to remove the children, but that no subsequent action to refer the children to protective services were reported.
“While NGOs reported overall good working-level relations with anti- trafficking officials, some local observers expressed concern that pressure from senior officials may have prompted some lower-level officials to suppress information to avoid drawing attention to trafficking in Guyana,” the U. S. report stated. It noted that government assisted about three victims during the reporting period.
Recommendations
As per norm, the U.S. State Department recommended measures by which Guyana could improve its response to human trafficking.
Principal among these are government: fostering “a climate in which officials and NGOs are encouraged to openly discuss human trafficking vulnerabilities with government officials and feel empowered to assist potential victims throughout the country, instead of being constrained by public statements that the problem is small; identifying and helping more potential victims of sex and labour trafficking throughout the country; empowering and funding or offering in- kind support to NGOs to identify and actively help the women, men and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking; and developing policies to ensure all identified victims are helped, and not punished for crimes committed as a direct result of being in a forced prostitution or forced labour situation.”
The report also urged Guyanese authorities to vigorously and appropriately investigate and prosecute forced prostitution and forced labour, including trafficking complicity; to raise awareness of forced labour and forced prostitution; and to facilitate opportunities for help in and around mining areas, in addition to Georgetown and coastal areas.
Report sources
Meanwhile, subject minister Priya Manickchand said she was pleased that Guyana had received a fairer ranking. She believes that the country’s protest to the USA had been vindicated. However, she remained curious to know how American officials gathered the information that is published in the reports, pointing to their references of ‘observers’. As it relates to the “official complicity”, the minister said, she is unaware of any such instance.
“Any government official who is found to be involved in trafficking in persons will be dealt with condignly,” Manickchand has assured.
As she did before, the human services minister is urging U.S. authorities to provide this country with information it may have on related issues.
However, she insisted that Guyana continues to fight human trafficking, and does not need the U.S. annual report to influence its work. In 2010, Guyana was put on the Tier Two watch list after being on that level for two consecutive years. The country initiated an aggressive protest, insisting that it was doing all it could to prevent and eliminate the scourge of human trafficking and protect victims. Several follow-up meetings involving officials of both countries were held.
Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia and Suriname are among those on the Tier Two list; while Barbados, Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, and St Vincent and the Grenadines are on the Tier Two watch list. The U. S., Norway, Colombia and Demark are among Tier One countries whose governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards.
