Thailand has been upgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 2 watch list in the 2016 report of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons of the US State Department.
The report said that Thailand is a source, destination and transit country for men, women and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking. Thai victims of trafficking and some of the estimated 3-4 million migrant workers in Thailand are forced, coerced or defrauded into labour or sex trafficking. Some labour trafficking victims are exploited in commercial fishing and related industries, factories, agriculture and domestic work or forced into street begging. Migrant workers who are trafficking victims may be deported without effective screening for indicators of trafficking. Sex trafficking remains a significant problem in Thailand’s extensive commercial sex industry.
Thai government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, however it is making significant efforts to do so, said the report. These include:
– The government amended the 2008 anti-trafficking laws and other laws related to forced labour in the fishing and seafood industry which increased criminal and civil penalties on traffickers, allowed for the closure of businesses involved in forced labour and provided legal protection for whistleblowers.
– The government increased the numbers of investigations, prosecutions, convictions and victims identified in 2015 compared with 2014.
– The government increased efforts to hold government officials complicit in trafficking crimes criminally accountable, however, officials complicit continued to impede progress in combating trafficking.
– The government established a specialized anti-trafficking prosecution division and an anti-trafficking court division and increased anti-trafficking training for police, prosecutors, judges, labour inspectors, social workers and navy personnel.
According to the report, the government increased anti-trafficking efforts. These include government’s initiating prosecutions of cases involving abused Rohingya asylum seekers and Bangladesh migrants. Of the 155 arrest warrants issued, 92 perpetrators were arrested during the reporting period. All were charged with human trafficking offenses as well as other related criminal charges.
The government investigated shipowners , captains and brokers for labour trafficking in the fishing industry in 41 cases and 31 vessels seized.
The government enacted legislation in December 2015 that criminalizes the possession and distribution of child pornography and leveraged the new legislation to build probable cause in cases involving internet-facilitated child trafficking and sexual exploitation.
The government established a Command Centre for Combatting Illegal Fishing to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
However, the report said the government did not make significant progress in ensuring that all adult trafficking victims were able to travel, work and reside outside shelters as provided by anti-trafficking law.
