The State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (often referred to as the TIP office), led by Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, was established in 2001 by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The TIP Office functions as the nerve center of the U.S. Government’s anti-trafficking and anti-slavery activities around the world and is one of the smallest but most effective of all U.S. foreign assistance programs.
The TIP Office has two main functions:
- To draft an annual Trafficking in Persons report outlining the challenges, trends and successes in identifying and protecting victims, prosecuting their perpetrators and preventing the crime in the future; and
- To administer grant programs that support and help improve these findings.
The Trafficking in Persons Report
Through the release of its annual Trafficking in Person Report, the TIP Office sheds light on the scope of modern-day slavery and the response to it in 188 countries. (Check out the 2012 TIP Report) The TIP Report ranks countries into three tiers based on the extent of the problem of slavery in the country and progress toward combating it:
- Tier I: Fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.
- Tier II: Do not fully comply with the minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
- Tier II Watch List: Countries where the number of trafficking victims is significantly large or increasing; the country is unable to provide evidence of its efforts to combat trafficking; or Tier III countries making significant efforts to complywith minimum standards based on commitments to take additional future steps over the next year.
- Tier III: Not meeting minimum standards, nor taking appropriate steps to do so.
Because the ranking system has real effects on the form of U.S. government sanctions, the report is a critical diplomatic tool to pressure countries to step up efforts to combat trafficking and modern-day slavery.
The TIP Grants Program:
The TIP Office administers $22 million in grants per yearaimed at preventing trafficking and slavery, protecting victims and prosecuting perpetrators.
Since 2004, IJM has received a total of $3.5 million in grants from the TIP Office. While U.S. government funding represents only 5% of IJM’s overall budget, it has nonetheless been extremely important to IJM’s work on child sex trafficking and bonded labor slavery in India, the Philippines and Cambodia.
TIP Grants in Action:
The TIP Office uses its grants to leverage change in trafficking problems in these and other countries:
Cambodia
Cambodia was largely unresponsive to reports of the sexual exploitation of young children until the country was downgraded to Tier III in the 2002 TIP Report. The TIP Office levereged the ranking and the threat of diminished foreign assistance to persuade the Cambodian Government to take action on child trafficking. Cambodia’s Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection unit (AHTJP) have since been effective in combating trafficking, leading to hundreds of victim rescues, perpetrator arrests and convictions.
Ghana
TIP grants enabled a U.S. expert prosecutor and a victim/witness coordinator to train Ghanaian police officers, prosecutors and social welfare agencies. Building on that training, Ghana successfully prosecuted, convicted and sentenced criminals in sex trafficking and forced child labor cases in the country’s Lake Volta region. These convictions helped Ghana upgrade its tier ranking, from Tier II Watch List to Tier II.
Peru
The TIP Office supported the Peruvian National Police Awareness and Training Program (RETA) to train national police officers in locating human trafficking victims and investigating their traffickers. Officers completing the intensive course received a special certification, making them eligible for promotion. As a result of the initiative, police operations more than doubled, rescuing more than 100 survivors and building significant media attention for trafficking in Peru.
TIP Report in Action:
Learn more about how the TIP Report has served as a catalyst for change around the world.
Nigeria
The TIP Report was an important catalyst for combating trafficking in Nigeria—particularly the trafficking of women to Italy for sexual exploitation. After Nigeria’s 2004 designation as a Tier II Watch List country, the wife of the President of Nigeria helped develop a comprehensive anti-trafficking framework, leading the country to secure a Tier I ranking in 2009. Nigeria has since intercepted thousands of attempts to traffic women and has increased prosecution of trafficking criminals, with 67 convictions of traffickers between 2004 and 2009.
The Philippines
The Philippines was designated as a Tier II Watch List country for the second year in 2010, requiring significant improvement to avoid a Tier III ranking in the 2011 TIP Report. The TIP Office worked closely with the government to address particular weaknesses in the country’s capacity to combattrafficking. With the TIP Office’s analysis and diplomacy, the Filipino Government madeprofound reforms, including putting trafficking cases on a fast track to unclog a massive backlog. In the first three months of 2011 alone, there were 12 convictions in anti-trafficking cases—compared with eight convictions in all of 2010.