On April 18, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights held a hearing, “Tier Rankings in the Fight Against Human Trafficking.” The hearing focused on concerns with the length of time countries remain on the Tier 2 Watch List before being downgraded to Tier 3, the worst designation in the rankings in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.
David Abramowitz, vice president, Policy and Government Relations, Humanity United, outlined the background of, and problems with, the tier rankings: “The original TVPA [Trafficking Victims Protection Act] of 2000 [P.L. 106-386] established three so‐called “tiers” as part of the statutory reporting requirement. Tier 1 is for countries that meet the minimum standards established by the law; Tier 2 is for countries that do not meet the minimum standards but are making significant efforts to do so; and Tier 3 is for countries that do not meet the minimum standards. The genius of the TIP Report is, and remains, that there are consequences of the so-called ‘tier rating’ system. These consequences are both moral and actual: Countries do not want to be known as having failed to meet minimum standards on modern slavery and, by not doing so, countries face the cutoff of non‐humanitarian, non‐trade related U.S. foreign assistance.”
Mr. Abramowitz added, “In making judgments regarding whether a country meets minimum standards, there has always been a clash between regional specialists within the department who would try to magnify the gains in a particular year in a specific country in order to achieve a higher tier ranking, and others who would argue for the strictest possible application of the legal standards to try to foster change that the TVPA was designed to achieve. This dynamic led to a situation in which at times countries that should have been placed in a lower category were instead moved to a higher category.”
The following witnesses also testified:
