Taiwan has maintained its top-tier ranking for the 16th consecutive year in the latest US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which said that Taiwanese authorities “continued to demonstrate serious and sustained efforts” to eliminate trafficking.
Taiwan joined 32 other countries in the top tier in the report released on Monday, including Canada, Finland, the Philippines, South Korea, the UK and the US.
The ranking means that Taiwan’s government met the minimum standards of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, but that does not mean the problem is nonexistent in Taiwan or that it is doing enough to stop it, the report said.
Photo: Reuters
Taiwan convicted more traffickers, significantly increased the number of victims referred to services and investigated cases of suspected forced labor by commercial entities since the previous report, it said.
However, the report added taht Taiwanese authorities have investigated fewer cases, prosecuted fewer suspects and did not fully implement victim identification procedures, which complicated some victims’ access to justice and protective care.
The report also cited deficiencies in Taiwan’s regulation of migrant workers and the conditions they work in.
Insufficient inspection protocols and the “siloing of authorities and responsibilities within different ministries continued to impede efforts to identify, investigate and prosecute forced labor of migrant workers, including those on fishing vessels in Taiwan’s highly vulnerable distant water fishing fleet,” it said.
Restrictions on migrant workers’ rights to change jobs mid-contract and authorities’ lack of specific labor laws ensuring the rights of migrant domestic caregivers continued to leave thousands vulnerable to exploitation in forced labor, the report said.
The report defined human trafficking as a crime in which “traffickers exploit and profit at the expense of adults or children by compelling them to perform labor or engage in commercial sex.”
Taiwan-caught fish remains on the US Department of Labor’s biennial “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor,” having been added in 2021 and again in 2023.
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