By KAYOKO GEJI/ Correspondent
July 22, 2022 at 09:20 JST
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the State Department in Washington on July 19. (AP Photo)
WASHINGTON--Japan has once again scored poorly on its efforts to stop human trafficking and forced labor in a U.S. State Department report released this week, failing to move up in the international rankings.
The country landed in Tier 2 of all three placements for the third straight year in the State Department’s annual anti-human trafficking report due to problems related to its technical intern training program for people from developing countries.
Of all the Group of Seven countries, only Japan and Italy were placed in Tier 2 in the 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report, published on July 19.
The rest were listed in Tier 1, the highest ranking, for meeting the minimum standards to fight trafficking.
While the report noted that Japan has “demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period” toward the elimination of trafficking, it also skewered it for the ineffectiveness of its measures and failure to crack down.
It kept Japan in the same tier as a “continued lack of political will to address all forms of trafficking and identify and protect trafficking victims contributed to the government’s overall lack of progress,” according to the report.
“Reports of forced labor among labor migrants working in Japan under the Technical Intern Training Program persisted in much higher numbers than that which the government identified during the reporting period,” it said.
The report also pointed out that the government “did not take any measures to hold recruiters and employers accountable for labor trafficking crimes under this system.”
It called for giving assistance to trafficking victims and enhancing victim screening to ensure victims are properly identified and referred to services, and not detained or forcibly deported for unlawful acts that traffickers compelled them to commit.
In Tokyo, Hikariko Ono, press secretary with the Japanese Foreign Ministry, said at a July 20 news conference that it is regrettable that Japan’s efforts to combat human trafficking were not given a fair assessment.
But she added that the government will remain committed to fighting trafficking along with other countries.
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