PH remains on ‘Tier 1’ status in US report on human trafficking

ZAMBOANGA CITY (MindaNews / 2 Oct) — The Philippines has remained on “Tier 1” status for the past 10 years as far as the global campaign against human trafficking is concerned, meaning it has “continued to demonstrate serious and sustained efforts” in combatting the crime, according to the 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report released by the United States government.

Authorities rescue persons who would have been victims of human trafficking in Zamboanga City in August 2025. Photo courtesy of Zamboanga Sea-Based Anti-Trafficking Task Force

The information office of the US Embassy in the Philippines, in an email to reporters on Tuesday, said the “Philippines fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”

A total of 33 out of the 188 countries assessed are considered under Tier 1.

Aside from the Philippines, the countries on Tier 1 are Argentina, Australia, Austria, The Bahamas, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Guyana, Iceland, Republic of Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Suriname, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.

A Tier 1 ranking in the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report does not mean a country is free from human trafficking. Instead, it signifies that the government fully meets the minimum standards outlined in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) to thwart the crime.

The report said that the Philippines’ efforts at fighting human trafficking “included investigating, prosecuting, and convicting more traffickers, including complicit officials, and sentencing the majority of convicted traffickers to significant prison terms; enacting new legislation to regulate fishing recruitment agencies and protect fishers; and taking steps to disrupt industrial-scale human trafficking in online scam operations, including by banning the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) licenses previously used commonly as a guise for these operations.”

Of the 11 countries in Southeast Asia, only the Philippines and Singapore are in the Tier 1 category.

Five of the Philippines’ neighbors are on Tier 2, or “countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards. These are Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.

Brunei is on the Tier 2 “watchlist,” meaning that “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; or there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year.”

The Southeast Asian countries in the lowest category, Tier 3, are Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma). These are “countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.”

The US, as mentioned in the report, recognizes two primary forms of trafficking in persons: sex trafficking and forced labor.

Sex trafficking, according to the TVPA, happens when “a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.”

Forced labor, meanwhile, involves “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.” (Frencie L. Carreon / MindaNews)