Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., are looking to reform how the State Departments produces its human trafficking report, after a press report last year found that U.S. diplomats were able to water down the findings in the department’s 2015 report.
The two senators introduced their bill after a 2015 Reuters story found U.S. diplomats were able to influence the Trafficking in Persons report, and make it appear as if human trafficking was less of a problem than it really was in those countries. According to Reuters, Cuba, China, Malaysia, India, Uzbekistan and Mexico all received better grades in the report than the State Department’s human-rights experts wanted to give them.
The bill also follows a Government Accountability Office report from last week that it’s not clear how countries receive their respective grades in the report.
The Trafficking in Persons Report Integrity Act (TIPRIA) would also increase Congress’ oversight of how penalties are enforced. It would also mandate certain rankings, taking away the discretion U.S. officials currently have when they write the report.
For example, it would require any country whose government sponsors forced labor to be ranked as a Tier 3 country, the lowest ranking a country can receive.
The State Department would also how to specify how a country’s concrete actions (or lack thereof) contributed to the change in ranking in the human trafficking report.
“In recent years, we’ve seen political agendas at the State Department interfere with America’s efforts to shine a light on human trafficking around the world,” said Rubio. “The Trafficking in Persons Report should be above politics and should reflect the full extent to which modern slavery exists and what governments are doing – or failing to do – about it. Passing this bill will bring greater transparency to this process of preparing the report and in doing so, it will help us hold human traffickers around the world accountable.”
