In a new report, the US asserts that Myanmar is no longer one of the world’s worst offenders on human trafficking, while removing both Myanmar and Iraq from a list of countries that use child soldiers.
In its annual report on human trafficking, the State Department also demoted China to the lowest ranking over its trafficking record, putting it in the same category as North Korea, Zimbabwe and Syria. Afghanistan was recognized for taking steps to curb trafficking, while Iraq was seen as making insufficient progress on that issue.
Ivanka Trump, the senior White House adviser and daughter of President Donald Trump, said ending human trafficking was in both the moral and strategic interests of the U.S., describing the effort as a “major foreign policy priority” for the administration:
“As a mother, this is much more than a policy priority,” she said at a ceremony to unveil the report. “It is a clarion call into action in defense of the vulnerable and the exploited.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the roughly 20 million victims of human trafficking globally illustrate how much more work must be done.
“Regrettably, our challenge is enormous,” Tillerson said. “Human trafficking is becoming more nuanced and more difficult to identify. Much of these activities are going underground, and they’re going online.”
More text from PBS news hour:[ Ссылка ]
Video courtesy US State Department
