G.A.O. study condemns annual U.S. trafficking report

An investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office has strongly questioned the credibility of the State Department’s annual human trafficking report. According to the G.A.O., the explanations used in the rankings are “incomplete,” and “not used consistently” and the report as a whole “does not comprehensively describe compliance with the standards.” The report went on to question the estimates of how many people were being subjected to trafficking around the world, citing “methodological weaknesses, gaps in data and numerical discrepancies.” It urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to initiate reforms in the process so that the rankings are clearly supported by comprehensive and accurate data. In the latest trafficking report, issued in June, Belize was placed on the Tier Three “worst offenders” list along with Laos, Uzbekistan, Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Myanmar, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and North Korea. This was despite admissions by U.S. personnel that human trafficking was not a problem in Belize. Since the June report the Government of Belize has engaged in an embarrassingly subservient campaign to show its concern for the problem of human trafficking and all it is doing to fight what now, more than ever, appears to be a phantom menace.