Barbados slides in Trafficking in Persons list
By George Alleyne
An absence of court
convictions followed by
imprisonment or fines has
caused a drop in Barbados’
ranking in the United States
State Department’s Trafficking
in Persons (TIP) list.
Following placement on
‘Tier 2’ for a number of years,
Barbados this year slid slightly
below to ‘Tier 2 Watchlist’,
which means that from April
01, 2018 to March 31 this year
the island’s administrators
have failed to fully meet the US
Trafficking Victims Protection
Act’s minimum standards,
“but are making significant
efforts to bring themselves
into compliance with those
standards.”
The US annually published
TIP report rates countries
across the world by their legal
and other administrative
efforts aimed at clamping
down on forced movement
of people for labour, sexual
slavery, or commercial sexual
exploitation.
There is no stated sanction
against countries with low
rankings but with the US being
a powerful economic force,
low ratings come with implied
treatment of the said countries
in trade, financial and other
arrangements.
Barbados’ slide this year
takes it to the lowest position
of the 15 CARICOM member
countries along with Belize,
and on level with Curacao and
above only Cuba in the wider
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Caribbean.
This means the island
has returned to this ignoble
position that it held in 2012.
The report observed that
Barbados is making significant
efforts to meet American
set standards including
raiding nightclubs suspected
of trafficking, screening
vulnerable individuals for
trafficking, providing antitrafficking
training for
immigration officials and the
police force, and conducting
public awareness campaigns.
The State Department
indicated that Barbados was
nonetheless downgraded to
Tier 2 Watchlist because, “the
government did not complete
its national action plan or an
anti-trafficking manual for
interviewing and providing
assistance for suspected
trafficking victims.
“Government agencies
continued to report a lack
of resources for their antitrafficking
activities. The
government’s anti-trafficking
law did not provide penalties
that were commensurate with
other serious crimes”.
The American report card
on Barbados in 2019 resembled
that of last year when it accused
administrators of initiating
no new prosecutions for the
fourth consecutive year, and
not yet securing a trafficking
in persons conviction.
The American State
Department had claimed in 2018
that the Barbados authorities
“conducted five investigations
in 2017, compared with three
in 2016, six in 2015, eight in
2014, and three in 2013”.
The 2019 report identified
only two additional
investigations in 2018.
In a repeat of last year’s
wording the report stated, “the
government has not reported
initiating a prosecution since
2013. The 2013 prosecution
of two suspected traffickers
remained pending before the
court. The government has
never convicted a trafficker. The
government did not report any
investigations, prosecutions,
or convictions of government
employees complicit in
trafficking offenses.”
This report covers nine
months of the new government
that came to power in May
2018.
The absence of immediate
efforts to roll back the dismal
years when TIP issues were
neglected is not surprising as
the new administration met an
empty Treasury with high debt
when entering office, and is
currently on a tight economic
recovery and restructuring
programme.
Barbados Attorney General Dale Marshall.
Photo by George Alleyne
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