Azerbaijan is among a few possible candidates for downgrade to Tier 3 at the State Department's Trafficking in Persons report this year, the lowest classification that opens the countries to sanctions from the US government, TURAN's Washington DC correspondent reports.
Besides Azerbaijan, five more countries are now on the Watch List -- Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Iraq and Republic of Congo; they have been places in Tier 2 in the past few years and now under US law, must be moved off the Tier 2 Watch List in the 2013 Trafficking in Persons report, which is set to come out in June.
"Countries cannot stay on the Tier 2 Watch List forever, and now the State Department must either promote them to the Tier 2 status or demote those countries to Tier 3, which is shared by the countries like of Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe," TURAN's correspondent was told by the Congressional sources.
According to the 2012 Trafficking in Persons report, Azerbaijan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and women and children subjected to sex trafficking, the government prosecuted fewer alleged trafficking cases and convicted fewer trafficking offenders than in the previous year, and it did not identify any labor trafficking victims; therefore, the country is placed on Tier 2 Watch List for a fifth consecutive year.
"The State Department has made crystal clear that the Government of Azerbaijan should: Transparently punish complicit government officials; Train labor inspectors to boost victim identification and improve a national victim referral mechanism; Amend its law to require work permits for migrant construction workers, and improve inspections of those workers' conditions; Improve access to justice for victims including by protecting them during court proceedings; Enforce its own ban against withholding of migrant workers passports; and Train working-level law enforcement on treating victims as victims", Mark Lagon, the State Department's former ambassador-at-large for trafficking in persons, mentioned during Congressional panel on "Grading States For Not Degrading People: Human Trafficking Assessments" later last week.
Lagon, currently a Professor in the Practice of International Affairs at Georgetown University, stated that absent tangible progress on these counts, Azerbaijan "merits the automatic downgrade provided for by Congress".
A cross-the-board downgrades of countries to Tier 3 are not to be justified unless based on objective assessment, Lagon emphasized..
"I favor encouraging further progress by merited upgrades. Yet China, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Republic of Congo, and Uzbekistan deserve close examination... I urge against using alleged "extenuating circumstances" as an excuse for inflating grades," he added.
Alakbar Raufoglu
Washington, DC
04/22/2013
Politics
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