5th Annual Trafficking in Persons Report

The U.S. Department of State released on Friday its 5th Annual Trafficking in Persons report. Kuwait has been highly criticized and placed as a Tier III country, which could trigger economic penalties. Other countries placed in Tier III include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Sudan, Togo, Cuba, and Ecuador. The section on Kuwait states that the country is a main destination for men, women, and children trafficked from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Phillipines, for labor exploitation. Other comments from the report

• "The Government of Kuwait issued public declarations against trafficking, but there is no evidence of judicial action against traffickers, despite ongoing reporting of physical and sexual abuse of domestic workers, physical abuse of laborers, and physical abuse and exploitation of trafficked child camel jockeys."
• "Kuwait made minimal efforts to protect trafficking victims over the last year."
• "During the reporting period, Kuwait took limited actions to investigate and prosecute traffickers."
• Notes:
• The repoort provides a narrative for almost all countries except the country issuing the report. With serious trafficking issues in the U.S., the authority of the report seems to be diminished.
  
• The report is useful for highlighting issues that need to be addressed. However, a serious effort requires naming names, and identifying major traffickers. But since these traffickers are mostly billionaires who pay-off many government officials, it would not be morally acceptable to release their names!
• The report fails to provide statistics to clearly and systematically highlight the problem. Again, this diminishes the credibility of this report, especially since it describes countries with imperfect governments who can spin this any which way they want.