Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, on the US list of countries with the most human trafficking

Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are among the countries with the greatest existence of human trafficking according to the list prepared by the United States, since they do not meet the minimum standards for elimination and do not make significant efforts to do so.

This is clear from the 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report) published this Monday by the United States Department of State, which divides countries according to their degrees of human trafficking and places those mentioned in the most serious level. , which were already there a year before.

In NicaraguaFor example, the Government of Daniel Ortega “continued to downplay the severity of the problem” and did not identify any trafficking victims for the second year in a row, nor prosecute or convict any traffickers.

TO Venezuela asks you to investigate and prosecute traffickers and their accomplices, involved in child sex trafficking, recruitment or use of children by NSAG or other illegal armed groups, trafficking of men and LGBTI people.

Already Cuba asks you to ensure that ““Government-sponsored labor export programs meet international labor standards, specifically that participants receive fair wages that are paid in full to bank accounts that workers can control.”

The report highlights that in the Western Hemisphere (North, Central, South America and the Caribbean) there are broad commonalities in the trafficking trends that countries face. In this case, they are usually related to irregular immigration.

“The unprecedented irregular migration in the region affects all countries in the Western Hemisphere. Migrants and asylum seekers are especially vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor, including by organized criminal groups large and small.”, he points out.

In general terms, the report states, in many countries “there is political will to address human trafficking” when it comes to sex trafficking, but there is “weak efforts aimed at combating forced labor”.

Thus, labor inspectorates are underfunded and understaffed and typically have limited or no authority to inspect informal sector workplaces where many victims are exploited, especially along shifting migration routes.

This year the report focuses on human traffickers’ increasing use of technology and online methods.more sophisticated” to recruit, control, market and exploit vulnerable people while evading detection.

Traffickers, for example, use the Internet to advertise and sell children online for sex, advertise fake jobs on social media platforms that are actually human trafficking schemes, transfer cryptocurrency to other traffickers, and perpetuate online scam operations. .