U.S. keeps Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua on human trafficking blacklist

The U.S. Government on Tuesday kept Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua on its "black list" of human trafficking because the countries do not comply with the standards of the U.S. law against this problem.

The blacklist also includes 19 other countries, including China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Russia, and Belarus, according to the U.S. State Department's 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report.

Although the report mentions Cuba and Nicaragua, the strongest criticism was against the Venezuelan regime, noting that the country "does not meet at all the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking and is not making any effort to do so."

The Report asserts that Nicolás Maduro has not reported any assistance to victims of human trafficking, nor any efforts to prosecute traffickers.

In addition, the regime's leadership "continued to provide support and maintained a permissive environment for non-state armed groups that recruited and used child soldiers for armed conflict and collaborated in sex trafficking and forced labor while operating with impunity."

Regarding Cuba, the report claims despite the lack of significant efforts, the Cuban regime has taken some steps to address human trafficking, such as investigating, prosecuting, and convicting traffickers.

However, it notes that during the period under study there were "government policies with a pattern of benefiting worker export programs with strong indications of forced labor."

The U.S. government claims that Havana "continued to send Cuban workers to foreign countries using deceptive and coercive tactics and without acknowledging labor violations and trafficking offenses."

The United States accuses Cuba of failing to report on law enforcement efforts to combat human trafficking.

When it comes to Nicaragua, the report says that Daniel Ortega’s regime "minimized" the seriousness of this phenomenon, despite having carried out some measures to address it, such as the prosecution and conviction of four human traffickers.

Because Nicaragua did not provide shelters or allocate funds to help victims, the United States considers its efforts to attack human trafficking to be "minimal."

Specifically, the Ortega regime has not reported any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in "trafficking offenses," despite "endemic corruption and widespread complicity of officials," nor has it cooperated with NGOs protecting victims.