– says US State Department in annual report
GUYANA’S Trafficking in Persons (TIP) ranking has improved for 2010, moving from ‘Tier 2 watch list’ to ‘Tier 2’,  according to the latest edition of the United States’ Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report, released yesterday in Washington by US Secretary of State Mrs. Hillary Clinton.
The upgrade in ranking signifies that while Guyana may not be in total compliance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of the US, it is making  significant efforts to do so.
It noted that people in domestic service in Guyana are vulnerable to human trafficking, “and instances of the common Guyanese practice of poor, rural families sending children to live with higher-income family members or acquaintances in more populated areas sometimes transforms into domestic servitude.”
The report said that other groups particularly vulnerable to human trafficking in Guyana include women in prostitution, children working in hazardous conditions, and foreign workers.
“Guyanese from rural, economically depressed areas are particularly vulnerable to trafficking in mining areas and urban centres,” the report pointed out.
But the report said trafficking victims in Guyana face disincentives to self-identify to authorities due to fear of retribution from trafficking offenders, fear of resettlement to abusive home situations, fear of arrest, and lack of awareness that human trafficking is a crime.
“The Government of Guyana does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Officials achieved an important milestone during the year — the first conviction of a trafficking offender — and there was new information that some public servants, including mining officials, made efforts to try to rescue potential victims,” the report said.
The State Department recommended that Guyana fosters a climate in which officials and NGOs are encouraged to discuss human trafficking vulnerabilities openly with the government and feel empowered to assist potential victims throughout the country.
It also urged Guyana to identify and help more potential victims of sex and labour trafficking throughout the country; empower and fund or offer in-kind support to NGOs to identify and actively help the women, men and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking; develop policies to ensure all identified victims are helped and not punished for crimes committed as a direct result of being in a forced prostitution or forced labour situation.
The US State Department urged Guyana to vigorously and appropriately investigate and prosecute forced prostitution and forced labour, including trafficking complicity; raise awareness of forced labour and forced prostitution and opportunities for help in and around mining areas in addition to Georgetown and coastal areas.
In terms of prosecution, the US State Department said government has made limited progress in holding human trafficking offenders in Guyana accountable during the reporting period.
“The Combating Trafficking of Persons Act of 2005 prohibits all forms of trafficking and prescribes sufficiently stringent penalties, ranging from three years to life imprisonment. The penalties are commensurate with penalties prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. The government reported that four new sex trafficking investigations were initiated in 2010,” the report said. It added that while child prostitution exists in Guyana, “there were no reports that Guyana was a significant sex tourism destination.”
It noted that the Guyanese authorities initiated two new prosecutions against sex trafficking offenders as compared to the previous reporting period, during which authorities did not initiate any new prosecutions. “In one case, a magistrate refused bail for an alleged trafficking offender at the request of a prosecutor. Two prosecutions initiated in other years were dismissed. For the first time, authorities reported a conviction of an offender who received a three-year prison sentence for sex trafficking,” the report said.
“Local experts believe, and media reporting suggests, that some government officials are making a good-faith effort to obtain convictions in human trafficking cases. Officials and other local experts also view Guyana’s legal system as largely dysfunctional and an ineffective deterrent against human trafficking. Accused criminals generally wait two years or longer for a judgment, and their cases are often delayed by backlogs, incorrectly filed paperwork, or the failure of witnesses to appear at a hearing,” the report stated.
It said Minister of Human Services and Social Security Ms. Priya Manickchand has attempted to strengthen trafficking prosecutions by hiring private attorneys to serve as special prosecutors in trafficking prosecutions, “although this appears to be a temporary solution.”
In terms of protection, the report said that the Guyana government has made some progress in protecting victims of trafficking during the reporting period. It noted that the government reported identifying only three forced prostitution victims and no forced labour victims during the reporting period. “The government has a protocol in place to guide officials in identifying and referring suspected trafficking victims to assistance, but a 2010 government report indicated that the small quantity of victims is an internal measure of success in combating trafficking, creating a potential disincentive for officials to identify victims proactively,” the report said.

MISLEADING REPORTS
In 2009, President Bharrat Jagdeo, alluding to the US TIP report on Guyana which placed Guyana on Tier 2, signalled his intention to write to United States President Barack Obama and ask him to review the process of constructing the reports since they are misleading and lecture the world rather than help.
The Head of State has said that on numerous occasions in Europe there were talks about human rights conditionalities being attached to trade and aid. Referring then to the report, President Jagdeo said that it takes 100 documented cases to place a country on the Human Trafficking Tier in the US State Department report, but in Guyana’s case, only two documented cases were produced in 2009.
INTERPOL (the International Police), the world’s second largest intergovernmental organization, an organization chartered by 188 nations to investigate organised crime, has indicated that Guyana has not been designated as a country involved in trafficking in persons, neither is any Guyanese being sought for any offence related to trafficking in persons by Interpol.
In a telephone interview with the Guyana Chronicle, an information liaison with the body said that trafficking in persons is an international criminal activity vigorously pursued by Interpol and the organization has no reason to believe nor do they possess any direct evidence of Guyana or Guyanese being involved in human trafficking.
Guyana’s Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Priya Manickchand, in speaking with Luis C De Baca, Ambassador-at-large and head of the Global Trafficking In Persons (GTIP) office at the US State Department following the release last year of the 2009 report, insisted that the conclusions and recommendations in the report are based on an earlier inaccuracy about large numbers of traffickers and trafficking victims existing in Guyana.
The Minister had noted that despite sincere and comprehensive efforts, the State Department failed to have the inaccuracies corrected and GTIP continued basing their conclusions and recommendations on those inaccuracies.
The Government of Guyana insists that the reports are misleading and based on fabrications.