Guyana’s Human Trafficking ranking missed key elements – US official

Jun 18, 2010 News

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This year’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, released by the US State Department has the government up in arms.
Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Priya Manickchand, participated in a joint press conference with the Minister of Home Affairs, Clement Rohee; Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh; and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon just hours after the report’s release on Monday.
At that press briefing she said, “We are friends with the US, but this kind of reporting is hurting our friendship and really, I believe is based on sheer ignorance and eye-pass. This report could, I think, be legitimately considered crap.”
She went on to say that “there is no justification for Guyana being on the Tier 2 watch list this year or in previous years.”
Yet for the last four years Guyana has been appearing in the report and on the Tier 2 Watch List as well.
According to the report, a country’s placement on the Tier 2 Watch List is a result of a combination of factors.
Although a country may be recognized as making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, an increase in the number of victims or failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts over those of the previous years to deal with the problem may create the conditions that place that country on the Watch List.
An official at the Embassy of the United States, on Tuesday, commenting on the report said that “one of the requirements is that a country shows improvement to get that higher ranking.”
The official pointed out that indeed there has been a significant effort on the part of the Guyanese Government to meet its obligations in this regard.
“However just because you’ve made a significant effort, that in and of itself isn’t enough to raise a ranking.”
Dr. Roger Luncheon who was at the Press Conference with Manickchand commented that there was something “sinister” about it being said that “Guyana you’re going be on Tier 3 in 2011″.
The embassy official noted that tackling the problem of Trafficking in Persons has to be a concentrated effort and if a country does not do enough – any country – then there is the very real possibility that the country could see its ranking drop.
But a drop to Tier 3 is not just a matter of ranking in some report; it implies very real consequences.
According to the report, Governments of countries on Tier 3 may be subject to certain sanctions, whereby the U.S. Government may withhold non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance.”
Further to that, these countries “may not receive funding for government employees’ participation in educational and cultural exchange programmes” and may “also face U.S. opposition to assistance (except for humanitarian, trade-related, and certain development-related assistance) from international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.”
In the specific narrative on Guyana, the report stated that “the government made some efforts to protect victims during the reporting period, but the number of identified victims was low, and the fact that the government charged no trafficking offenders and has yet to convict a trafficking offender undermined the effectiveness of those protections.”
To this end, Manickchand pointed out that Guyana needed to make no apology for the lack of convictions, since every citizen is guaranteed the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty by the court.
She said, “If a magistrate cites lack of evidence, or a victim withdraws from a matter and refuses to give evidence, it is the duty of the court to acquit or discharge an accused.
To do anything else would be to render an injustice to a citizen who is guaranteed a right to a fair trial and due process. The government cannot therefore ‘ensure’ convictions.”
The Embassy official did point out that Guyana made its first conviction in human trafficking earlier this year, an event that the pertinent departments are aware of.
However the fact that the event occurred outside of the reporting period means that it could not affect this report but it will be considered in the preparation of the next report.
The official said that the country’s first conviction is encouraging, but it’s not a matter of just doing one thing and leaving it at that – the process needs to be continuous.
The official also pointed out that the requirements are not new and that there was a representative from the Global Trafficking in Persons Office down here to explain the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Process and to point out what they were looking for late last year.

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