Trafficking in Persons Interim Assessment - Venezuela
| Publisher | United States Department of State |
| Publication Date | 24 February 2010 |
| Cite as | United States Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Interim Assessment - Venezuela, 24 February 2010, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/4b8e7a668.html [accessed 6 June 2023] |
| Disclaimer | This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. |
[From the introductory text accompanying this report on the U.S. Department of State website: "In most cases, the Interim Assessment is intended to serve as a tool by which to gauge the anti-trafficking progress of countries that may be in danger of slipping a tier in the upcoming June 2010 TIP Report and to give them guidance on how to avoid a Tier 3 ranking. It is a tightly focused progress report, assessing the concrete actions a government has taken to address the key deficiencies highlighted in the June 2009 TIP Report. The Interim Assessment covers actions undertaken between the beginning of May – the cutoff for data covered in the June TIP Report – and November. Readers are requested to refer to the annual TIP Report for an analysis of large-scale efforts and a description of the trafficking problem in each particular country or territory."]
The Government of Venezuela has made no discernable progress in combating trafficking in persons since the release of the 2009 Report. The government declined to provide information on whether it had prosecuted any of the suspected trafficking offenders in the six investigations of transnational sex trafficking, one investigation of transnational labor trafficking, and one investigation of internal trafficking it opened in the previous reporting period or whether it has taken any action against officials who might be complicit in trafficking crimes. The Venezuelan government reported conducting 15 trafficking investigations and detaining 11 people for trafficking crimes in 2009, though it did not indicate how many of these occurred after April 2009. The government acknowledged that it has not amended its current anti-trafficking legislation, the 2007 Organic Law on the Right of Women to a Violence-Free Life, to prohibit the trafficking of men and boys, but it claimed that these crimes are adequately penalized under other active laws and internal protocols.
Government funding for victim shelters appears to remain severely limited, and no information was made available by the government as to whether its support for protective services had increased or otherwise changed. NGOs noted that the government-sponsored TIP hotline frequently does not work.
