MIAMI _ The U.S. State Department commended Haiti's government Thursday in doing more to curb human trafficking. But the country's failure to convict traffickers, properly fund anti-trafficking efforts and protect children show that it is still failing to meet the minimum standards in key areas to eliminate the criminal exploitation altogether.
Under the State Department's latest Trafficking in Persons report, Haiti remains a Tier 2 country, which means the government isn't fully in compliance but "is making significant efforts."
Among those efforts, the report released Thursday highlighted: The investigation of nine trafficking cases involving 19 suspects in 2019 compared with nine cases in 2018 and two in 2017; the investigation of 33 defendants for forced labor of minors by the Police Brigade for the Protection of Minors, and the arrest of 51 suspects in 35 trafficking cases by Haiti's border police. The same police unit also turned over 24 potential trafficking victims to the Haitian Social Welfare Agency during the reporting period.
Despite those steps, the report said Haitian adults and children continue to be "at risk for fraudulent labor recruitment and forced labor, primarily in the Dominican Republic, other Caribbean countries, South America and the United States." The reason is the government's failure to properly fund anti-trafficking efforts, ensure prosecution of traffickers and to pass laws banning child labor and establishing a minimum working age for children.
Among the steps Haiti's government needs to take, according to a list of recommendations in the report: Vigorously investigate, prosecute and convict traffickers, including officials who are complicit and those responsible for domestic servitude and child sex trafficking. The government also needs to properly fund an anti-trafficking plan, including victims' assistance and establish shelters for victims. And it needs to train police and social workers on how to spot trafficking, while educating the public about children's rights to freedom and education.
"The government maintained efforts to identify and protect victims of trafficking, however, outside observers and government interlocutors noted the government provided limited services to victims of trafficking and was largely dependent on partners to fund and provide services," the report said.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the report. Calling human trafficking "a truly wicked act," U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said Thursday that there are 25 million adults and children suffering from labor and sex trafficking worldwide.
Last year, he said, President Donald Trump restricted certain types of assistance to the governments of 15 countries that were ranked Tier 3 _ the worst possible designation _ in the 2019 report.
"And in January of this year, the president hosted a White House Summit on Human Trafficking. He signed an executive order to combat human trafficking and online child exploitation in the United States," Pompeo said. "This administration has ensured that nearly half a billion dollars is dedicated to the global fight against both sex and labor trafficking."
While countries often take issue with the State Department's classification of their efforts, 21 countries received upgrades this year, 13 of them from Sub-Saharan Africa. Namibia received a Tier 1 rating, becoming the first and only African country to achieve the best rating since 2012.
In the case of Haiti, it fared better than Venezuela or Cuba, which Pompeo singled out for the 50,000 Cuban doctors that have been "forced by the Castro regime into human trafficking situations in more than 60 countries." But as the reported noted, Haiti still has a lot of work to do.
While there were no reported cases of officials being complicit in trafficking, for example, the report did note that corruption remains an obstacle to overall prosecution of cases.
"Observers reported allegations that judicial officials in border jurisdiction, such as justices of the peace, sometimes took bribes to free detained suspected human traffickers, which contributed to an environment where traffickers largely operated with impunity," the report said.
The country's outdated penal and criminal procedural code and lack of oversight by the Superior Council of the Judiciary meant that cases were not only delayed but in many instances "the cases ended in the accused being released without trial," the report said.
In its trafficking profile, the report noted that most of Haiti's trafficking cases involve children in forced labor in domestic service and it referenced a culturally ingrained child servitude practice known as restavek.
Separated from their own families, restavek children work without pay for more-affluent families, sometimes in exchange for schooling or a place to stay.
Such children are often physically abused and have significant lower school enrollment rates, the State Department said, citing a joint Haitian government and international organization study on the state of children in the country. According to the report, one in four Haitian children do not live with their biological parents and an estimated 286,000 children under the age of 15 work as domestic servants. Some of them are likely exploited in forced labor, the report noted.
"Government officials have rarely used the (Trafficking in Persons) law to prosecute and convict the perpetrators of exploitation of child domestic servants," the report said.
For example, the Brigade for the Protection of Minors investigated calls referred from 24-hour trafficking hotlines, but the lack of a minimum age for domestic workers and exceptions in the laws governing child labor rendered investigations and prosecution of child domestic servitude difficult.
The Trafficking in Persons report also raised concerns highlighted in a 2018 study that "significant numbers of children in orphanages are likely victims of trafficking and approximately 50 of the total 750 orphanages in Haiti are either licensed or becoming officially licensed."
This daunting reality was brought to light in February, when 13 children and two adults were killed when a fire broke out at an unaccredited children's home run by the Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding, an American religious nonprofit in Port-au-Prince.
The home, as well as another run by the same nonprofit, had repeatedly failed inspections even though the Church of Bible Understanding has made millions in annual revenue. Though the government had launched an investigation and kept one of the victims' bodies for three months to perform an autopsy, officials told The Associated Press that the autopsy was never perform on 6-year-old Lovena Luberice.
The girl's mother told the AP that she had received $200 from the church's Haitian lawyer as compensation for her dead child. The incident was not mentioned in the State Department's trafficking report.
