On 24 June, the 2024 US trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report) was released. A major theme of this year’s TIP report is technology’s role in both trafficking and anti-trafficking activities.
According to the report 32,996 victims were identified in Europe, while there were only 1667 convictions. This shows the strong discrepancy between cases and successful law-enforcement with Europe being in the middle regarding the ration compares to other regions.
As for the ranking of countries efforts, there have been some changes, for example Poland has been upgraded to Tier 1 and Ireland to Tier 2. This year, 33 Countries are ranked Tier 1, which includes 18 European countries (16 EUMS), while 21 European countries are listed in Tier 2. For Europe only Belarus and Russia are ranked in Tier 3, while Malta and Serbia are on Tier 2 Watch List. The placement of those countries in Tier 3 is not surprising, due to their low efforts in combating human trafficking and supporting CSOs in the anti-trafficking community.
We were happy to see that two European Heroes were appointed this year, after no European was appointed last year: Marijana Savić and Rosa Cendón.
Rosa was working for SICAR cat (now LSI’s member Amaranta – Fundación de Solidaridad) for 20 years. In 2022, she started to work for the Catalan Government. We are proud that a former staff member and still a close colleague has been granted the TIP Hero Award. We congratulate Rosa.