The United States Department of State has listed St Vincent and several other Caribbean countries in its 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards”.
It stated that “trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” are umbrella terms, often used interchangeably, to refer to a crime whereby traffickers exploit and profit at the expense of adults or children by compelling them to perform labour or engage in commercial sex.
Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Belize, Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago have all been placed in Tier 2 ” whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards”.
St Lucia and Barbados have been placed in Tier 2 Watch List “whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards (with certain exceptions), and for which the estimated number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing, and the country is not taking proportional concrete actions”.
In its report, the State Department has placed The Bahamas, Guyana and Suriname in Tier 1 which it said are those “whose governments fully meet the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.
Saint Maarten, Venezuela and Cuba have been placed in Tier 3 “whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.”
The State Department also listed Haiti, along with Libya, Somalia and Yemen in the “Special Case” category.
