[JURIST] The US State Department [official website] on Monday released [statement, text] released the 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) [report, PDF]. The report upgraded Malaysia and Cuba from the “Tier 3 Watch List” [2014 TIP, PDF], as countries not making significant effort to comply with the minimum standards, to the “Tier 2 Watch List”, as countries making significant effort to comply, a move criticized Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] and other rights groups, which argue the changes were made for political reasons. HRW told Reuters [Reuters report],”Malaysia’s record on stopping trafficking in persons is far from sufficient to justify this upgrade…[t]his upgrade is more about the T[rans-]P[acific] P[artnership] and U.S. trade politics than anything Malaysia did to combat human trafficking.” The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) [JURIST report; TPP website] is a proposed international trade agreement being negotiated by 12 countries, of which Malaysia is one. Placement in the Tier 2 Watch List would allow the US to go through with the TPP as desired. The fact the US recently resumed relations with Cuba [JURIST report] has also drawn some to criticize the State Department’s TIP ranking.

Approximately 36 million people in the world live in a form of modern slavery [JURIST report], the Global Slavery Index (GSI) [advocacy website] reported [text, PDF] in November. For the purposes of the study, GSI defined modern slavery as involving “one person possessing or controlling another person in such as a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal.” Human trafficking [JURIST op-ed] plays a prominent role in supplying the labor in modern slavery. HRW in May called on the Thai government to authorize a UN-assisted inquiry into human trafficking [JURIST report, press release] in Thailand. In March UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an end to modern slavery and human trafficking [JURIST report] during remarks at the unveiling of The Ark of Return, Memorial to the Victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Earlier that month, UN human rights expert Maria Grazia Giammarinaro urged the Malaysian government to make improvements to its efforts to combat human trafficking [JURIST report]. In August, Kenya’s parliament passed a law providing greater support to victims of human trafficking [JURIST report]; the law will also make it easier to secure convictions for perpetrators.