Movin’ on up! And those that moved down in the 2011 TIP Report

This year’s TIP Report includes country narratives on 184 countries, featuring seven new profiles on Aruba, Curacao, Marshall Islands, St. Lucia, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, and Tonga. One of the most notable components of the TIP Report is the tier placements, and of course everyone wants to know how their country measured up this year. The 2011 TIP Report boasts upgrades for 23 countries and demotions for 22 countries, a quasi-equilibrium in shifts. But what does this re-shuffling mean?

The Summary

Who’s up?
23 countries:  Belize, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Gabon, Guatemala, Guyana, India, Kazakhstan, Laos, Lesotho, Macedonia, Moldova, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Philippines, Portugal, Senegal, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago

Who’s down?
22 countries: Algeria, Angola, the Bahamas, Belarus, Burundi, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire (given Special Case designation), Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Micronesia, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen

The Details

The Analysis

The Tier 2 Watch List (2WL) was designed to be a temporary status based on a lack of full compliance with minimum standards set by the US government, or other failing of the government. The “watch list” designation represents the hope that states would change their behavior to avoid public scrutiny for being bumped down to the lowest tier: Tier 3. By design it serves as an unstable category that promotes movement either up or down in the subsequent year.

The majority of the shifts from 2010 to 2011 demonstrate some movement for a 2010 2WL country to either Tier 2 (19 countries out of 23) or Tier 3 (12 countries out of 22). The countries that remained on the Watch List from 2010 to 2011 received a waiver from Secretary of State Clinton. Therefore, the more interesting and significant shifts are up from Tier 2 to Tier 1 (3 countries) and down from Tier 2 to Tier 2 Watch List (9 countries).

There is no set formula for movement—each country is assessed on a case-by-case basis. But perhaps to better understand what a tier shift means, we should consider the extremes.

There was only one country that moved up from the very bottom (3 to 2WL), signifying the beginning of efforts to come into compliance with the minimum standards to end trafficking: the Dominican Republic (D.R.). This promotion was catalyzed by improvements in victim identification and protection. The D.R. identified 88 victims over the course of the year and had an increase from 1 investigation last year to 35 in this reporting period. The lack of effort to fulfill prosecution initiatives is purportedly what kept D.R. on the Watch List instead of moving up to Tier 2.

The definition of Tier 1 implies countries have to “demonstrate appreciable progress in combating trafficking” from year to year to maintain that highest level. Only one country slipped down from the very top (1 to 2), meaning it fell out of full compliance with efforts to uphold minimum standards to end trafficking: the Czech Republic. This demotion was made due to two “high profile cases of labor trafficking” which “revealed serious problems in the government’s response” mechanisms. Particular weak spots: the Czech government’s limited victim identification capacity, resulting in fewer prosecutions and investigations, and its tacit and probably inadvertent acceptance of forced labor of migrants enabled by minimal regulation of employment agencies.

As countries continue to make efforts (or lack thereof) to comprehensively combat human trafficking the numbers will continue to shift around in the constant shuffle up and down.