Human traffickers exploit individuals, and human trafficking often involves transnational criminal organizations, violations of labor and immigration codes, and government corruption. Many forms of trafficking—including sex trafficking and labor trafficking—can take place anywhere in the world and can occur without crossing country boundaries. As discussed in the Trafficking in Persons Report, trafficking victims include Asian and African women and men who migrate to the Persian Gulf region for domestic labor but then suffer both labor trafficking and sexual abuse in the homes of their employers. Some victims are children; for example, Pakistani children as young as 5 are sold or kidnapped into forced labor to work in brick kilns, some of which are owned by government officials. Other victims are subjected to sexual exploitation; in some cases, women and girls have been bought and sold as sex slaves by members of the Islamic State; in others, adult men and women are forced to engage in commercial sex, and children are induced to do the same. Individuals, including men, are exploited in forced labor in a variety of sectors; Burmese men, for example, have been subjected to forced labor 20 hours a day, 7 days a week on fishing boats in Thailand. Reliable data on the scope of trafficking are limited due to a number of factors. Trafficking is a clandestine activity, which limits the data available on victims. Victims may live daily under inhumane treatment, physical and mental abuse, and threats to themselves or their families. Because of their vulnerable position, trafficking victims may be unwilling or unable to report to, or seek help from, relevant authorities. They may distrust the government and police because they are afraid of being deported or because they come from countries where law enforcement is corrupt and feared, or their traffickers made such threats to discourage their reporting to law enforcement. Further, some governments do not systematically collect data on victims or do not recognize some types of trafficking, such as forced labor or the trafficking of men. In 2000, Congress enacted the TVPA and reauthorized it four times, most recently in 2013. The act, as amended, defines severe forms of trafficking in persons as (1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act is under age 18; or (2) 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. The TVPA does not specify movement across international boundaries as a condition of trafficking nor does it require the transportation of victims from one locale to another. According to State officials, the TVPA definition of trafficking is largely consistent with the definition set forth in the UN Protocol on trafficking in persons. The TVPA, as amended, provides a framework for current U.S. antitrafficking efforts, including the criteria for the Trafficking in Persons Report. According to State officials, it is also consistent with the UN Protocol on trafficking in persons in approaching this crime within a framework known as the “three p’s”: prosecution, protection and prevention. These include the prosecution and punishment of traffickers, the protection of and assistance for victims of trafficking, and the prevention of trafficking. The TVPA, as amended, also laid out minimum standards for eliminating trafficking to be used in the Secretary of State’s annual assessment of foreign governments’ antitrafficking efforts (see app. II). The first three standards deal with countries’ efforts to enact laws to prohibit severe forms of trafficking and prescribe penalties for trafficking. The fourth standard, as detailed by State, relates to government efforts to implement those laws and includes 12 criteria that can be used to assess these efforts. For example, criteria for the fourth minimum standard include whether a country’s government has achieved appreciable progress in eliminating trafficking—including prosecuting traffickers, protecting victims, and preventing trafficking—compared to efforts from the previous year and whether a country’s government has taken steps to protect and provide assistance, such as counseling and shelter, to victims. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking Office) was established in accordance with the TVPA of 2000. The office is headed by an ambassador-at-large and is organized into four sections: Reports and Political Affairs, International Programs, Public Engagement, and Resource Management and Planning. The Reports and Political Affairs section prepares the congressionally mandated Trafficking in Persons Report annually. Other parts of State, including regional bureaus, which cover geographic regions, and functional bureaus, which cover global issues such as refugees and human rights, also have input into the report. The report ranks countries into one of four categories, or tiers, based on the Secretary of State’s assessment of foreign governments’ compliance with the four minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking. See figure 1 for the number of countries in each tier in 2015 and 2016. As reported by State, the definitions of the four tiers are as follows: Tier 1: countries whose governments fully meet the minimum standards. Tier 2: countries whose governments do not fully meet the minimum standards but are making significant efforts to do so. Tier 2 Watch List: countries whose governments do not fully meet the minimum standards but are making significant efforts to do so and have a very significant or increasing number of victims, fail to show increasing efforts to combat trafficking from the previous year, or have been assessed as making significant efforts to comply based on commitments to take steps over the next year. Tier 3: countries whose governments do not meet the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so. Figure 2 shows tier ranking by country. Appendix III lists each country by tier. In addition, under a 2008 amendment to the TVPA, any country that has been included on the Tier 2 Watch List for 2 consecutive years and that would otherwise be ranked on the Tier 2 Watch List for the next year will be included in Tier 3 in the third year. The Secretary of State is authorized to waive the automatic downgrade if the Secretary determines that a government has devoted sufficient resources (such as funding, staffing, or in-kind or other resources) to a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute making significant efforts to meet the minimum standards and reports credible evidence of such to specified congressional committees. Countries may receive such a waiver for two consecutive years, after which time a country must either go up to Tier 2 or down to Tier 3. The TVPA, as amended, also established funding restrictions, such as withholding nonhumanitarian, nontrade-related assistance, that could be applied against governments that are not in compliance with the minimum standards and not making significant efforts to come into compliance (i.e., countries in Tier 3). Types of assistance that can be withheld include support to a country’s military. Those funding restrictions may be waived by the President if the provision of assistance would promote the purposes of the TVPA, or is otherwise in the U.S. national interest. The Trafficking Office drafts the Trafficking in Persons Report based on information it receives from a variety of sources including U.S. missions, NGOs, and foreign governments. In 2014, after the most recent TVPA reauthorization, State officials noted that they revised State’s guidance for drafting country narratives and its guidelines for implementing the TVPA minimum standards to help ensure consistent application of the standards across country narratives. The Trafficking Office also makes tier ranking recommendations for each country. The Trafficking Office stated that it reported to Congress in a timely manner all required information on countries that received waivers to avoid being downgraded to Tier 3, but it did not annually post this information to its website within the TVPA required deadline for the 2014, 2015, or 2016 reports. The information for all 3 years was posted in September 2016 despite the requirement to do so within 30 days of notifying Congress of these waivers. According to Trafficking Office officials, they resolve most tier ranking disagreements with regional bureaus, with relatively few elevated to the Secretary without a consensus recommendation. In the final step of the process, the Trafficking Office facilitates communication between other State bureaus and other government agencies to decide whether to recommend that the President grant waivers for funding restrictions for countries in Tier 3. The Trafficking Office produces initial drafts of the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report with input compiled from a variety of sources including U.S. missions, foreign governments, and NGOs. Those drafts are edited and refined with the direct involvement of the regional and functional bureaus. The reporting period covers actions that governments take from April 1 of one year through March 31 of the next year. See figure 3 for an overview of the reporting process from information gathering through issuance. According to State officials, Trafficking Office analysts gather information throughout the year from sources including foreign governments, U.S. missions overseas, other department offices and U.S. government agencies, NGOs, media reports, and research, as well as the analysts’ travel and consultations around the world. Officials noted that the 12 analysts in the office were each responsible for 15 to 20 countries, grouped by geographic region, in the 2015 and 2016 reports. The Trafficking in Persons Report has narratives for 188 countries in the 2015 report, including two territories and one special case. Trafficking Office officials stated that each analyst is responsible for maintaining expertise and gathering information for each country in his or her portfolio, which includes traveling to the countries to engage with U.S. mission staff, NGOs, and host government officials. In November, the Trafficking Office sends a request for information to all diplomatic and consular posts and publishes a four-page notice in the Federal Register requesting information on the degree to which the United States and foreign governments meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons.