One-time waiver saves Trinidad and Tobago: Narrow escape from Watch List downgrade

This country was supposed to be downgraded from Tier 2 Watch List on the US Traffic In Persons Report 2023, but escaped because of a one-time waiver.

The report, which was published on Thursday ranked TT at Tier 2 Watch List for a third consecutive year, which meant an automatic downgrade to Tier 3.

Countries that are on the Tier 2 watch list are those whose government has not met the minimum standards of the UN TIP Protocol and the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection (2000 )Act, (TVPA) but is making significant efforts to do so.

The waiver was given as the country, in its detailed plans, showed how it will improve its handling of human trafficking.

A downgrade would have seen TT being banned from getting financial assistance from the US and ineligibility to access some loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“Countries on Tier 3 may be subject to certain restrictions on foreign assistance, whereby the President may determine not to provide US government non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance as defined in the TVPA.

"In addition, the President may determine to withhold funding for government official or employee participation in educational and cultural exchange programs in the case of certain Tier 3 countries.

"Consistent with the TVPA, the President may also determine to instruct the U.S. Executive Director of each multilateral development bank and the IMF to vote against and use their best efforts to deny any loans or other uses of the institutions’ funds to a designated Tier 3 country for most purposes (except for humanitarian, trade-related, and certain development-related assistance).”

The difference between the designation TT has and the intended downgrade to Tier 3, is that in the latter category, countries therein, are deemed as not making significant efforts to meet the TVPA.

“Because the government has devoted sufficient resources to a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute significant efforts to meet the minimum standards, TT was granted a waiver per the Trafficking Victims Protection Act from an otherwise required downgrade to Tier 3. Therefore Trinidad and Tobago remained on Tier 2 Watch List for the third consecutive year,” the report said.

The TVPA said any country that has been ranked Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years and would have been ranked the same for a third time, then it should be ranked Tier 3 the third year.

If TT does not improve then it will be downgraded as the waiver can only be given once. TT was last downgraded in 2021 when it went from Tier 2 to Tier 2 Watch List.

A Tier 2 Watch List ranking also means the estimated number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing and the country is not taking proportional concrete actions; or there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, including increased investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of trafficking crimes, increased assistance to victims, and decreasing evidence of complicity in severe forms of trafficking by government officials.