The United States government has kept Cuba, Venezuela, China and Russia on its human trafficking list, considering that these countries do not meet the standards established by US law to combat this type of crime.
The announcement was made by the US Department of State in its Trafficking in Persons Report of 2022, released this Tuesday (19) and which analyzes the situation in worldwide.
There are other 18 countries on the list, such as North Korea, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Nicaragua.
Among the three Latin American countries, the report is most forceful with Venezuela, stating that it “does not meet minimum standards to eliminate trafficking and is not making any effort to do so.”
The United States pointed out that the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro did not report any type of assistance to victims, nor any effort to prosecute traffickers.
The text emphasizes that the Venezuelan government “continued to provide the support and maintain a permissive environment for non-state armed groups that recruited and used child soldiers for armed conflict and collaborated in sex trafficking and forced labor while operating with impunity.”
Regarding Cuba, the The report states that, “despite the lack of significant efforts”, the Cuban government has taken some steps to tackle human trafficking, such as investigating, prosecuting and convicting traffickers.
Nevertheless, the document says that during the period under review there was a “government policy or pattern of exploitation” of labor export programs, “with strong indications” of forced labor.
On this point, the US government mentions Cuban medical missions in other countries and assures that Havana “continued to deploy Cuban workers to foreign countries using deceptive and coercive tactics”.
