For the fourth consecutive year, Guyana has maintained its Tier 1 ranking for its efforts to combat human trafficking, although the government has been called upon to to implement and train law enforcement officials and front-line responders in written trauma-informed victim identification and referral procedures.
According to the latest United States’ State Department report on Trafficking in Persons (TIP), Guyana and the Bahamas are the only two Caribbean countries to attain the Tier 1 ranking, as most of the other Caribbean countries are on Tier 2, except for Barbados which is on the Tier 2 watchlist.
While Tier 1 is the highest ranking, it does not mean that a country has no human trafficking problems or that it is doing enough to address them. Rather, the ranking, as explained by the report, indicates that a government has made efforts to address the problems that meet the US’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards. And to maintain the Tier 1 ranking, governments need to demonstrate appreciable progress each year in combatting trafficking.
According to the report, the Government of Guyana fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking as it continued to demonstrate serious and sustained efforts during the reporting year, hence its Tier 1 ranking.
The efforts by the government included the completion of a draft amendment of the Combatting Trafficking of Persons Act, sentencing a convicted trafficker to 15 years in prison, drafting a national action plan to eliminate child labour, completing standard operating procedures for investigating and prosecuting trafficking cases, and opening its first trafficking shelter outside Georgetown.
The report stated that over the last five years, human traffickers have exploited domestic and foreign victims in Guyana, and traffickers have exploited victims from Guyana abroad. Women and children from Guyana, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Suriname, and Venezuela become sex trafficking victims in mining communities in the interior and urban areas.
“The government notes a large increase in the number of trafficking victims from Venezuela,” the report said. It added that the authorities identified child victims of sex trafficking as well as forced labour in the fast-growing extractive and service industries. These traffickers exploit victims in labour trafficking in mining, agriculture, forestry, domestic service, and in shops. And while both sex trafficking and labour trafficking occur in remote interior mining communities, limited government presence in the country’s interior renders the full extent of trafficking unknown. Traffickers exploit Guyanese nationals in sex and labour trafficking in Jamaica, Suriname, and other Caribbean countries.
Although the government met the minimum standards, the report said that it investigated and prosecuted fewer suspected traffickers, identified fewer victims of trafficking, and did not provide adequate screening or shelter for child and male victims. It noted that there are insufficient labour inspectors and that training in human trafficking is inadequate.
The report recommended that the government reduce delays in court proceedings and pretrial detention of suspects, fund specialized victim services, particularly for child, adult male and Venezuelan victims in their native language. Government should also vigorously investigate and prosecute sex and labour trafficking cases under the TIP Act, including those involving child victims. Convicted traffickers, including complicit public officials, should be held accountable by the government through investigation, prosecution, conviction, and the imposition of sufficiently stringent sentences.
And those police officers and law enforcement officials who abuse vulnerable individuals and intimidate victims in shelters should be held accountable. Further, the report called on the government to provide additional protection for victims to testify against traffickers in a way that minimize re-traumatization and to strengthen the capacity of labour inspectors to identify and refer victims of labour trafficking. Officials must also be able to track and report data on trafficking cases reported to the trafficking hotline and by labour inspectors and must be able to execute and publish a robust monitoring and evaluation framework for anti-trafficking policies and efforts.
Prosecution
In the area of prosecution, the report said that Guyana maintained minimal law enforcement efforts even though the penalties under the Combatting Trafficking of Persons Act 2005 are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other crimes such as rape.
For the year, the government reported 27 new investigations (25 for sex trafficking and two for labour trafficking), which the report said was a decrease from 30 in 2019; in 2018 there were 4 investigations reported. The police made 55 arrests in cases of sex trafficking and labour trafficking and continued investigations in 19 trafficking cases that were initiated in 2019.
One trafficker was convicted for sex trafficking of a minor and an adult female, compared with one conviction in 2019. The convict received 15 years imprisonment, 10 for the minor and five for the adult victim. No report of new investigations of government officials complicit in trafficking offences were made, although the government screened Venezuelan women and children who experienced human rights abuses, including sexual exploitation by government officials.
And the appeal of the 2017 case, where a convicted trafficker was ordered to make restitution without imprisonment – a penalty inconsistent with the law – is still pending at the end of the reporting period.
“Observers noted there were frequent, widespread reports of physical and sexual abuse of children and allegations that some police officers could be bribed to make such cases go away,” the report said.
No information was given on the still pending appeal of the police officer who was convicted of trafficking but released on bail in 2016.
For the reporting period, the government added immigration officials at major transit points to screen all arriving and departing migrants. And despite training for some judicial, prosecutorial, and law enforcement officials, trafficking and other major criminal prosecution cases took an average of two years in process and pretrial detention averaged three years. Some 221 law enforcement officers were trained on trafficking victim identification and referral procedures and 48 judicial officers on standard operating procedures for prosecuting human trafficking cases with the assistance of international organisation during the reporting period.
Protection
The 2020 report found that the government maintained inadequate efforts to protect victims and identified fewer victims, despite an increase in Venezuela refugees. And victim assistance remained a serious concern, especially in areas outside the capital and among Venezuelan child and male victims.
Last year the government identified 102 victims (63 sex trafficking and 39 labour), a decrease from 156 in 2018 and 131 in 2017. The victims were from Guyana, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Venezuela. Ninety-five were female and seven were male, with 10 minors. Three were referred by an international agency. Out of the listed victims, 99 were referred to shelters with 98 to protective services, compared to with 93 out of 131 in 2018. The report said it is not clear if victims received individualized care plans. And due in part to the noticeable increase of victims from Venezuela, the government began to work on standard operating procedures to identify and refer trafficking victims for protection with assistance from an international organisation but did not adopt them by the end of the reporting period.
According to the report, the government provided $60 million to NGO-managed shelters providing housing for adult female victims of gender-based violence and trafficking in 2019, the same amount as in 2018. Victims could receive shelter, food, training, and psychological therapy. The government also provided $2 million, a decrease from the $3.5 million last year, in direct financial assistance to victims who chose not to stay in a shelter.
But there were inadequate trafficking shelters for male or child trafficking victims, and few provided trauma-trained staff or long-term facilities.
Prevention
Meanwhile, the report indicated that the government increased efforts to prevent trafficking as the task force met monthly and initiated several activities including an awareness campaign and training events. The government also reported drafting an amendment to remove the requirement for force, fraud, or coercion in child trafficking, but this was not adopted due to the restrictions on constitutional authority of the caretaker government.
The report also said that the government monitored human trafficking in the country and released the results of monitoring in the media while it reported that 25 hotline calls resulted in trafficking investigations during the reporting period. No effort was made to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts even though labour officers frequently conducted impromptu visits to work sites and business premises in the mining and logging districts and capital city to investigate suspect labour practices and violations.
Authorities reported six child labour violations, citations were issued for two cases of child sex trafficking but the government did not report whether the criminal charges were filed under the TIP Act, the Protection of Children Act or the Employment of Young Persons and Children Act. The two latter laws have lesser penalties than the TIP Act.
