The State Department recently released the 25th edition of its Trafficking in Persons Report. This report, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “pushes countries to take serious action against forced labor and sex trafficking and ensures that those who fail to act face consequences. The Trump Administration is dedicated to upholding American values, protecting American workers, and defending its communities.”
Human trafficking is a horrific and devastating crime that also enriches transnational criminal organizations and immoral, anti-American regimes. While many countries have taken steps to prevent official complicity in human trafficking, a number of malign governments have done exactly the opposite, engaging in state-sanctioned forced labor in violation of international standards and fundamental principles of human rights.
In Cambodia, for example, senior officials owned properties used by online scam operators to exploit victims in forced labor and forced criminality.
A number of countries still compel labor as a form of punishing political opposition. In North Korea, an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 people are held in prison camps and an undetermined number of persons in other forms of detention facilities, including “re-education through labor” camps. Russian-led forces also unlawfully conscript or force many Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, including those in detention, to fight against their own country or engage in other labor, such as to clear rubble and dispose of corpses.
Some countries exploit their own citizens in forced labor. The Cuban regime, which generated $4.9 billion in revenue from the export of medical services in 2022, the last year for which data is available, has long employed a policy of state-sponsored human trafficking in its medical missions, including through coercive recruitment and employment practices and abuse of legal processes.
In China, the Chinese Communist Party is exploiting Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang through a government policy of widespread forced labor, including through mass arbitrary detentions.
These governments and their officials have reaped substantial financial benefits by subjecting others to forced labor, which harms not only victims but other countries and their citizens.
The trafficking report urges governments to lead by example in eradicating human trafficking. This includes passing legislation to prohibit and punish official complicity and adopt internal policies and procedures to guard against complicity.
The report encourages the anti-trafficking community to “seize opportunities to advance the movement. Traffickers are creative and determined. The anti-trafficking community must continue to be even more creative, drawing on the determined spirit of those who launched the anti-trafficking movement as it presses onward into the next quarter century.”
