The United States Department of State has released the 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report. This paper is a guide for the pubic to see the full range of human trafficking. Although many governments, communities, and organizations help survivors of human trafficking. Some many have a narrow understanding of traffickers and victims, this commonly happens in countries domestic legal responses.

“In practice, this may mean that governments overlook certain forms of human trafficking when the conditions do not meet their narrower presumptions. For example, authorities may not consider men and boys as victims of sex trafficking due to a common misperception that sex traffickers only exploit women and girls.”

This paper goes through various counties showcasing how their governments have or have not addressed cases of human trafficking. Counties are separated in tiers based on meeting the TVPA [Trafficking Victims Protection Act] minimum standard.

Below is how the paper defines the minimum standard:

(1) The government of the country should prohibit severe forms of trafficking in persons and punish acts of such trafficking.

(2) For the knowing commission of any act of sex trafficking involving force, fraud, coercion, or in which the victim of sex trafficking is a child incapable of giving meaningful consent, or of trafficking which includes rape or kidnapping or which causes a death, the government of the country should prescribe punishment commensurate with that for grave crimes, such as forcible sexual assault.

(3) For the knowing commission of any act of a severe form of trafficking in persons, the government of the country should prescribe punishment that is sufficiently stringent to deter and that adequately reflects the heinous nature of the offense.

(4) The government of the country should make serious and sustained efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons.

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