DINESH RAMBALLY
MANY CITIZENS have an awareness that TT was moved to Tier 2 status in the recently-issued 2023 US State Department report on human trafficking. This “improvement” might be met with a vague sense of reassurance that things are improving, if marginally. This would be a misleading conclusion. The situation described in that report is horrific. It sketches a thumbnail of wide national complicity in this industry of exploitation.
On the positive side, the report notes the Government increased its anti-trafficking activities. A National Task Force Against Trafficking in Persons, an agglomeration of ten agencies and six NGOs, was formed. It has done public education programmes via the media, initiated victim assistance and outreach platforms in Spanish. It had also made efforts to restrict the “commercial sex” trade.
But these efforts seem flimsy compared to the realities of dealing with the problem as it exists. TT is now a transit point for vulnerable Venezuelan refugees and migrants en route to Europe, North Africa and elsewhere. Sex trafficking is the most prevalent form of trafficking and includes women and girls from Latin America, the Dominican Republic and Guyana. Trinidadian fishermen are a major trafficking medium between Venezuela and the 132 points of entry on Trinidad’s southern coast.
So, along with all its other infamy, Trinidad is a now hub of sex trafficking of women and girls. Trafficking begins online as victims are lured, and the sex trade is carried out in bars, spas and brothels, which are patronised by locals as well as sex-tourists from the US, Canada, China and Europe.
The victims include Trinidadian and Tobagonian schoolchildren as well as foreign trafficked children. And all arms of the state – Coast Guard, TTPS and immigration and customs and other officials – are complicit with large international criminal organisations,
megabandas, which are involved from the mainland.
As far as prosecutions for trafficking go, 22 prosecutions were initiated by the Counter Trafficking Unit (CTU) for 2023, and 26 cases brought in previous years continued. Early last year charges were dismissed against three Trinidadians and one dual national because the police did not locate the victim for testimony. No convictions for 2022 were reported. A large part of this was due to the vulnerability of victims, who are not protected by government, and choose to not testify.
These are bare numbers. There is no comparison between the quantum of prosecutions and the scope of the trafficking. However, the efficacy seems about as impressive as the TTPS’s action in every other area – with the detection rate considerably below 20 per cent.
The number of victims identified, upon whom prosecutions rely, remains small. The Government has identified 38 trafficking victims and 36 sex-trafficking victims for 2023. The report states that the Government’s victim statistics were unreliable, and NGOs estimated 500 trafficked people for the two-year period addressed by the survey.
Especially disturbing
