US: Kiwi trafficking responses too weak
The United States has hit out at New Zealand’s weak prison sentences for child sex traffickers and lack of prosecution for labour trafficking.
The Biden Administration has tagged 17 nations — mostly authoritarian states — as not doing enough to fight human trafficking and warned them of potential US sanctions.
The rankings are part of an annual US State Department Trafficking in Persons report, which ranks efforts against the issue based on US laws.
The administration also called out several allies and friends, including New Zealand, Israel, Norway, Portugal and Turkey, saying they are not meeting international standards for combating trafficking but are making significant efforts to do so.
Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi said it was “disappointing” to be downgraded, and the Government would review the report and consider what changes were needed.
The report also cited the coronavirus pandemic as a cause for a surge in human slavery this year and last.
Covering 188 nations and territories, the report said the outbreak had put millions more people at risk for exploitation and distracted some Governments from efforts to stem human trafficking.
The report cited New Zealand for not initiating any prosecutions for labour trafficking and weak prison sentences for child sex traffickers that “significantly weakened deterrence, undercut efforts to hold traffickers accountable, and did not adequately address the nature of the crime”.
Faafoi said New Zealand was committed to eliminating people trafficking, and had developed a Plan of Action against Forced Labour, People Trafficking and Slavery to be implemented over five years.
The US measure showing more trafficking prosecutions was “problematic” for NZ and similarly small nations because, combined with lengthy trafficking investigations, their size meant prosecutions varied significantly year to year, Faafoi said.
Despite this, there had been some success, he said. In 2020 Hawke’s Bay man Joseph Matamata was sentenced to 11 years in prison and ordered to pay $183,000 in reparations for trafficking and slavery. He has appealed.
The Government had also invested $50 million over four years in ending migrant exploitation.
“While not all victims of people trafficking are migrants, we acknowledge that migrants are particularly vulnerable,” Faafoi said.
The US report classified 17 mostly authoritarian nations as “Tier 3” for failing to meet minimal standards to stop what Secretary of State Antony Blinken called an “inhumane cycle of discrimination and injustices”.
The designation means that without a presidential waiver those countries could lose some US help, although decisions on such penalties will not be made until later this year.
“It’s a global crisis, it’s an enormous source of human suffering,” Blinken said, saying almost 25 million people, many of them women and children, are victims.
Newcomers to the Tier 3 category are Malaysia and Guinea-Bissau, both of which had been on a watchlist for a downgrade for three years.
They join Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, China, Comoros, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan and Venezuela in the worst-offender category.