The Biden administration on Thursday called out Israel for backsliding in its efforts to combat human trafficking.
This came as part of the U.S. State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons" report, which cited the coronavirus pandemic as a cause for a surge in human slavery between 2020 and 2021. The report, which covers 188 nations and territories and ranks them according to a four-tier system, said the outbreak had put millions more people at risk for exploitation and distracted some governments from efforts to stem human trafficking.
The Jewish state is one of six valued U.S. partners and friends that were downgraded from the top Tier 1 category to Tier 2. That means they don't meet international standards for fighting trafficking but are making significant efforts to do so. No penalties are attached to a Tier 2 designation.
The report said Israel, Washington's closest Middle Eastern ally, had worked to eliminate human trafficking, but its efforts "were not serious and sustained" compared to the previous reporting period even accounting for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Victim identification policies "sometimes re-traumatized" victims and delayed their access to necessary care, sometimes for years, while the government reduced its overall efforts to investigate, prosecute and convict traffickers, it said.
Other countries that were given a slap on the wrist for declining efforts to combat human trafficking were Cyprus, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland.
The report also classified 17 mostly authoritarian nations as Tier 3 for failing to meet minimal standards to stop what Secretary of State Antony Blinken called an "inhumane cycle of discrimination and injustices." The designation means that without a presidential waiver those countries could lose some U.S. assistance, although decisions on such penalties will not be made until later this year.
Newcomers to the Tier 3 category are Malaysia and Guinea-Bissau, both of which had been on a watchlist for a downgrade for three years and were ineligible to avoid the designation because they had failed to take steps to improve their anti-human trafficking efforts.
They join Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, China, Comoros, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan and Venezuela in the worst offender category. Most of those countries are already subject to U.S. sanctions for other reasons.