Maldives upgraded to Tier 2 in U.S. human trafficking report

Maldives has moved to Tier 2 in the he U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report after remaining on the Tier 2 Watch List for the past four years.

The 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report was released by United States Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday at a ceremony held at the State Department. The annual report categorizes nations into tiers based on their compliance with minimum standards to combat human trafficking.

Maldives has remained on the Tier 2 Watch List since 2009 for failure to show efforts to combat severe forms of human trafficking. Following the upgrade to Tier 2, Maldives is now classified as a country making significant efforts to comply with minimum standards against trafficking.

In a statement following the release of the 2014 Trafficking in Humans Report, Maldives Minister of Foreign Affairs Dunya Maumoon said, "upgrading the Maldives to Tier 2 level in the Trafficking in Persons Report is a vindication of the Government’s policies on stopping human trafficking in the Maldives."

In its 2014 report, the U.S. State Department states the Maldives as a destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking, and a source country for women and children subjected to labor and sex trafficking.

“An unknown number of the approximately 200,000 documented and undocumented foreign workers in Maldives — primarily Bangladeshi and Indian men in the construction and service sectors — experience forced labor, including fraudulent recruitment, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or nonpayment of wages, and debt bondage,” read the report.

It also states that some Maldivian children are transported from islands to the capital Male’ for domestic service and that some of these children are subjected to sexual abuse and forced labor.

The report also highlights shortcomings in anti-trafficking law enforcement and notes that he government did not adequately train police and other officials on trafficking, nor did it provide authorities with procedures to identify victims.

However, report states that Maldives government is making significant efforts to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and highlights the ratification of the Anti-Human Trafficking Law in December last year.

It also notes that the government has opened its first shelter for trafficking victims, has distributed pamphlets about rights to migrant workers in a number of other languages, has blacklisted some companies for fraudulent recruitment practices, and convicted a trafficker for the first time in Maldives.