The United States on Thursday included Haiti, Venezuela and Belize on its list of countries that are not doing enough to combat people trafficking, a measure that could lead to sanctions, while Colombia and Chile were given the best marks in the hemisphere in a report on the problem.

Eight nations appear for the first time on the black list in the State Department’s annual “Trafficking in Persons” report, published on Thursday. They include: Haiti, Myanmar, Suriname, Sudan, Djibouti, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Papua New Guinea.

They join a score of countries appearing once again this year in the lowest category, including Venezuela, Belize, Equatorial Guinea, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Algeria, South Sudan and Mauritania.

President Barack Obama now has 90 days to decide if sanctions will be imposed on the nations on the black list, and those sanctions could include freezing non-humanitarian and non-commercial aid or denying the countries loans from multilateral institutions.

In its 2015 report, the State Department decided to remove Cuba from the black list after that nation had appeared in that category since 2003, and in the document published on Thursday Havana was still excluded from the worst category.

Cuba appears, however, in the next-lowest category, that of being placed on the “Watch List,” along with Bolivia, Costa Rica, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Ukraine, among others.

“When we talk about “human trafficking,” we’re talking about slavery, modern-day slavery that … claims more than 20 million victims (at) any given time” worldwide and supports an illicit industry bringing in $150 billion, Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday at the presentation of the report.

People trafficking victims “are enforced to endure … a living hell in modern times that no human being should ever have to experience,” he added. EFE

 

Washington, Jun 30 (EFE)