US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that currently there are nearly 25 million trafficking victims worldwide.
The United States on Tuesday placed 11 countries on lists of states engaged in a "policy or pattern" of human trafficking and forced labor or whose security forces or government-backed armed groups recruit or use child soldiers.
Blinken told a ceremony as he presented the 2022 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report on Tuesday that one of the challenges laid out in this year’s report is the climate crisis and the instability that it helps accelerate and create.
“As we’re seeing in our hemisphere, climate is a key driver of mass migration, which can create, alas, ideal conditions for traffickers,” he said.
“According to the UN Environment Programme, natural disasters – as well as the loss of livelihoods that they produce – may increase trafficking by up to 30 percent,” he added.
The report contained a separate list of 12 countries that employ or recruit child soldiers.
On Iran, it said the government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. “There was a government policy or pattern of employing or recruiting child soldiers and the deception or coercion of adults to fight in Iranian-led militias operating in Syria.”
On Syria, it also said the government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.
“During the reporting period, there was a government policy or pattern of human trafficking and employing or recruiting child soldiers. The government exploited its nationals in forced labor in its compulsory military service by forcing them to serve for indefinite or otherwise arbitrary periods,” said the report.
It said US President Joe Biden has determined that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive in part the application of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the Child Status Protection Act with respect to Yemen “and has certified that the Government of Yemen is taking effective and continuing steps to address the problem of child soldiers.”
“A critical element of ending the conflict in Yemen is our counterterrorism campaign and efforts to counter Iranian arms smuggling to the Houthis,” it added.
