U.S. keeps Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and China on human trafficking blacklist

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The United States on Thursday kept Nicaragua, Venezuela, China, and Cuba on its “blacklist” of countries that do not do enough to combat human trafficking, and warned of problems in countries such as Israel or Saudi Arabia, according to the new State Department report.

“This crime is an affront to human rights and human dignity,” stressed Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, in presenting the annual report.

Blinken also asserted that human trafficking has a “disproportionate burden” on those “oppressed by other injustices” in developing countries and warned that the pandemic has “exacerbated” problems among the most vulnerable.

The U.S. diplomacy chief highlighted China’s “egregious” actions against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the country’s western Xinjiang province, where nearly one million people are subjected to forced labor.

The list of 17 countries is completed by Afghanistan, Algeria, Myanmar, Comoros, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, North Korea, Malaysia, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan.

Inclusion on the “blacklist” can lead to the imposition of sanctions such as the freezing of non-humanitarian and non-commercial aid for the sanctioned countries or exclusion from loans from institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) so decided by U.S. President Joe Biden.

On Cuba, the report noted the “government’s pattern of taking advantage of worker export programs with strong signs of forced labor, particularly in its foreign medical mission program.”

Regarding Nicaragua, the State Department noted that the Nicaraguan government “continues to downplay the seriousness of human trafficking in the country despite civil society reports of an increase in victims in 2020.”

And in the case of Venezuela, it warned that the “authorities provide support and a permissive environment for non-state armed groups,” including illegal Colombian organizations, “to recruit and employ child soldiers for armed conflict and sex trafficking while operating in Venezuelan territory with impunity.”

The report also points out problems in countries considered traditional U.S. allies.

For example, Israel, where, according to the report, the efforts of the authorities to curb human trafficking “are neither serious nor sustained”; or Saudi Arabia, which it points out does not respect “minimum standards of protection” for foreign workers, many of them victims of this crime.

The State Department estimates that some 25 million people worldwide suffer under the yoke of this scourge.