2020 Trafficking in Persons Report

The U.S. State Department today (June 25th) released the latest edition of the Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report). (We wrote about the 2019 edition here and 2018 here.)

We are particularly pleased that the 2020 edition recognizes the efforts of ICCR:

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
based in the United States uses a multi-faith approach from a
different angle. A coalition of more than 300 global institutional
investors with more than $500 billion in managed assets, it
uses the power of shareholder advocacy to engage companies
to identify, mitigate, and address social and environmental
risks associated with corporate operations, including human
trafficking. ICCR members call on companies they hold to
adopt policies banning human trafficking as a key part of
their core business polices, and to train their personnel and
suppliers to safeguard against these risks throughout their
supply chains. ICCR’s Statement of Principles & Recommended
Practices for Confronting Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery
provides guidance to companies to protect their supply chains
from sex and labor trafficking.

2020 Trafficking in Persons Report (p. 25)

SGI members prioritize this work, and this recognition from the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons confirms the efficacy of our efforts with corporations.

David Schilling, ICCR’s senior program director for human rights, said, “Whether it is workers trafficked into forced labor in a factory in Bangladesh or on a plantation in Indonesia; whether it is women trafficked for sex in the US or children exploited on-line, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility’s members utilize their role as shareholders in a range of companies to promote policies and practices to end modern slavery. The framework we use is the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights which defines what it means for a company to respect human rights, especially for persons made vulnerable by economic systems that marginalize and exploit.”

Pat Zerega, of Mercy Investment Services and chair of the Human Trafficking- Worker Rights leadership team, said:

For several decades, ICCR has been a leader on supply chain issues, and advocacy work on trafficking brought a new aspect to corporate dialogues. Mercy Investment Services’ involvement since the start of this effort includes working domestically with the travel, transportation and tourism industries around corporations training staff to spot trafficking. Resources such as the Celebration without Exploitation toolkit provided the groundwork for investors.

ICCR expanded its focus to labor trafficking, including the development of a Principles for Confronting Human Trafficking and investor tools for issues of ethical recruitment and, more recently, the Investor Alliance for Human Rights resources. These tools enhance the ability of all shareholders to understand the issues and address corporations.

Ranking governments based on their perceived efforts to acknowledge and combat human trafficking, each year’s TIP report includes tiers of troubled countries. The report assigns countries into three tiers. Tier 1 consists of “countries whose governments fully meet the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards.” Below Tier 1, Tier 2 contains countries that may not meet the TPVA standards, “but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.” A “Tier 2 Watch List” consists of countries that are similar to Tier 2, but have other issues, such as an increasing number of trafficking cases or a lack of improvement on previously-implemented anti-trafficking efforts. Tier 3 countries are those “whose governments do not fully meet the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.”

The 2020 report underscores longstanding concern about China, especially in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The report also identified U.S. agricultural workers as particularly vulnerable. As well, the report acknowledges that its compilation was hindered by COVID-19, even as COVID-19 makes more people vulnerable to trafficking. A recent webinar put it well: “In many places, human traffickers, sadly, are the first responders to the pandemic.” While grateful for the recognition from the State Department, no doubt, we ICCR members must renew and redouble our efforts.