Photo/Illutration U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a ceremony for the Trafficking in Persons Report on June 24 at the State Department in Washington D.C. (AP Photo)

WASHINGTON--Japan remained in the second of four rankings for the fifth consecutive year in a U.S. State Department report on human trafficking over its handling of child prostitution and exploitation of foreign technical interns.

The 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report, which was released June 24, placed Japan in Tier 2, to which it had been downgraded from the top-ranked Tier 1 in 2020.

The report said the Japanese government “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.”

It said efforts were still insufficient to combat problems surrounding foreign nationals working under the technical intern training program and child prostitution.

According to the report, “the number of criminal investigations and cases prosecuted by the government for labor trafficking and child sex trafficking remained low.”

“A majority of child sex traffickers (were allowed) to operate with impunity,” it said.

The report called on the government to “vigorously investigate and prosecute sex and labor trafficking and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers.”

The human trafficking report maintained China in the lowest ranking.

It said, “there was a government policy or pattern of widespread forced labor” involving Uighurs and members of other ethnic minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region “under the guise of ‘vocational training’ and ‘deradicalization.’”

Other countries in the same group include North Korea, Russia and Iran.

In East Asia, South Korea was upgraded to Tier 1. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam was upgraded to Tier 2.

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