U.S. Dep't of State, 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: Vanuatu

VANUATU (Tier 2 Watch List) The Government of Vanuatu does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. These efforts included finalizing a five-year anti-trafficking NAP, finalizing a national labor mobility policy, and initiating amendment of the anti-trafficking act. The government implemented new screening procedures for arriving passengers at border control points. However, the government did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period.

For the fifth consecutive year, authorities did not identify any trafficking victims or provide any protection services to trafficking victims. For the fourth consecutive year, the government did not investigate any trafficking crimes. The government also did not conduct public awareness campaigns or administer systematic anti-trafficking training for its law enforcement officials. Therefore Vanuatu remained on Tier 2 Watch List for the second consecutive year.

PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS: Work with civil society, the private sector, and religious and community leaders to develop public awareness campaigns in Bislama and English to raise awareness on all forms of human trafficking, particularly among individuals in commercial sex; LGBTQI+ individuals; remote communities, including those near commercial forestry operations; school-aged children; and migrant workers. * In coordination with civil society, develop and implement comprehensive SOPs for victim identification and referral to care and train stakeholders on their use. * Institutionalize anti-trafficking training for front-line officials, including police and immigration officials, on the indicators of trafficking and victim-centered and trauma-informed trafficking investigations. * Increase the availability of protection services – including short-term shelter, long-term housing, counseling, and medical care – for all trafficking victims, including by partnering with and allocating funding and in-kind support to civil society service providers. * Adopt and implement a comprehensive national action plan and dedicate resources to its implementation. * Increase efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking crimes, including those involving victims’ family members, and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms. * Proactively identify trafficking victims by screening for trafficking indicators among vulnerable populations, including individuals in commercial sex, LGBTQI+ individuals, migrant workers, persons displaced by natural disasters, communities located near commercial forestry operations, school-aged children, and People’s Republic of China (PRC) nationals employed at worksites affiliated with PRC-based companies, and provide them protection services. * Establish a protection mechanism to ensure victims who self-identify are not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked, such as immigration violations. * Develop and maintain a comprehensive and centralized database to accurately track and report the government’s anti-trafficking efforts and improve information sharing and targeted anti-trafficking approaches among relevant government agencies. * Increase protections for ni-Vanuatu trafficking victims exploited abroad, including by providing pre-departure anti-trafficking training to all migrant workers. * Amend anti-trafficking legislation to remove sentencing provisions that allow fines in lieu of imprisonment for sex trafficking crimes. * Improve anti-trafficking coordination with international partners, including by increasing information sharing with sending countries and instituting standard repatriation procedures. * Accede to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol.

PROSECUTION

The government maintained inadequate law enforcement efforts. Vanuatu law criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Article 34 of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Organized Crime (CTTOC) Act criminalized trafficking in persons crimes involving adult victims and prescribed penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to 50 million Vanuatu vatu (VT) ($431,030), or both. Article 35 criminalized trafficking in persons crimes involving child victims and prescribed penalties of up to 15 years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to 75 million VT ($646,550), or both.

These penalties were sufficiently stringent; however, with respect to sex trafficking, by allowing fines in lieu of imprisonment, these penalties were not commensurate with those prescribed for other grave crimes, such as rape. The government reported the Office of the Public Prosecutor began work to amend the anti-trafficking act. For the second consecutive year, the government did not report any trafficking investigations, prosecutions, or convictions. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking crimes.

The Vanuatu Police Force’s National Intelligence Unit (NIU) was the lead agency for trafficking investigations; however, the lack of dedicated funding, staff, and training in the country’s anti-trafficking policy infrastructure continued to constrain authorities’ ability to investigate trafficking cases. For the third consecutive year, the government did not report any anti-trafficking training activities for law enforcement or other government officials. The government did not report cooperating with foreign counterparts on any law enforcement activities. A lack of dedicated resources and low level of awareness of trafficking among law enforcement officials hindered the government’s ability to combat human trafficking.

Civil society reported previous calls to law enforcement about potential trafficking crimes were reportedly not investigated.

PROTECTION

The government maintained inadequate efforts to identify or assist victims. For the fifth consecutive year, the government did not report identifying any trafficking victims. The government lacked comprehensive, government-wide victim identification and referral SOPs. The government, in partnership with an international organization, implemented new screening procedures, including criteria to screen for trafficking indicators, for arriving passengers at border control points.

Observers noted police allowed violence and discrimination against LGBTQI+ persons; therefore, criminal acts and trafficking indicators may have gone unreported and resulted in failure to identify trafficking victims. Due to a lack of formal identification procedures, authorities likely punished or deported some unidentified trafficking victims. Civil society reported the fear of deportation and social stigmatization prevented victims from self-identifying. The government did not report assisting any victims.

The government did not report providing services to one Bangladeshi labor trafficking victim identified in 2018 who remained in country. The government relied heavily on civil society to provide social services. There were no government or NGO services specifically tailored to the needs of trafficking victims and the government did not operate a shelter. Civil society, without government funding, could provide legal support, temporary accommodation, medical care, and crisis counselors, but only to women and girls.

Civil society reported a lack of services for men and boys. When available, protection services were time-limited, and in the past, authorities conditioned some services on victims’ participation in court proceedings against the alleged traffickers. In previous years, the government required victims to remain in Vanuatu to serve as witnesses in prosecution of cases and tied their repatriation to a final court ruling; an international organization reported this requirement may have re-traumatized several victims in prior reporting periods. The government did not report having a process in place to change victims’ immigration status to grant them permission to work until the court reached a verdict, which could compound some victims’ indebtedness.

In 2020, one labor trafficking victim sought restitution; the government did not provide an update to this restitution case. In prior years, the government provided temporary visas to victims who participated in court proceedings; however, the government did not provide victims who did not participate the option to obtain a visa.

PREVENTION

The government increased efforts to prevent trafficking. The National Steering Committee on Migrant Protection (NSC) was the national anti-trafficking coordinating body; the NSC met on an ad hoc basis. The NSC was an interagency committee composed of senior government officials from multiple agencies, including Vanuatu Immigration Services, Transnational Crime Unit (TCU), Department of Labor, and National Security Council, and civil society groups. The government, in partnership with an international organization, drafted and finalized the National Action Plan to Counter Human Trafficking and Smuggling and Protect Vulnerable Migrants in Vanuatu 2023-2028; the NAP remained pending for approval at the end of the reporting period.

Civil society urged the government to strengthen interagency coordination and establish a government database to track anti-trafficking efforts. Government officials and civil society reported a severe lack of understanding of trafficking among the public. Government officials acknowledged the prevalence of human trafficking in Vanuatu and that the crime was not reported due to a lack of awareness of trafficking, including by law enforcement officials. For the fifth consecutive year, the government did not conduct anti-trafficking awareness campaigns.

The government did not operate a trafficking hotline. The government, in partnership with international organizations, initiated research to assess the scope of its trafficking problem in the fishing industry. The labor department licensed and monitored agencies that could recruit workers from Vanuatu for overseas work. The government prohibited recruitment fees for seasonal work outside of Vanuatu and issued a notice of “non-compliance” to agents who charged migrant workers recruitment fees; the government did not report issuing any notices.

The government, in partnership with international organizations, initiated review of its seasonal workers’ program and finalized a national labor mobility policy, including sections on workers’ protection and referral mechanisms; the policy remained pending for approval at the end of the reporting period. During a prior reporting period, the government proposed policy and legislative action to abolish seasonal worker recruitment agents and create a centralized government-managed process to connect workers with employment; however, the government did not report an update to the proposed actions. The government, in partnership with an international organization, continued to implement a program to digitize and streamline citizen access to voter cards, citizenship documents, and national identification cards. The government did not report providing anti-trafficking training to its diplomatic personnel.

The government did not make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts. Vanuatu was not a party to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol. TRAFFICKING PROFILE: Human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Vanuatu, and traffickers exploit victims from Vanuatu abroad. Women and girls are at risk of debt-based coercion in sex trafficking and domestic servitude via the customary practice of “bride-price payments,” where a man’s family gives a woman’s male relatives money or other valuables in order for the man and woman to become married.

The man’s family may at times force the woman to “pay back” the money through commercial sex acts or forced domestic service. The incidence of bride-price payments is linked to broader economic hardship and vulnerability, particularly in the context of the country’s frequent natural disasters; increased reports of forced child marriage, where children may be exploited in domestic servitude or sex trafficking, occur after natural disasters, including immediately after a cyclone in April 2020. Natural disasters and climate-induced displacement significantly increase ni-Vanuatu vulnerability to trafficking, particularly as a majority of the population relies on small-scale and subsistence agriculture. Thousands of ni-Vanuatu, who permanently or temporarily evacuated from the islands of Ambae and Ambrym due to volcanic activity, are at higher risk of trafficking due to the economic hardships ensuing from their ongoing displacement.

Traffickers exploit children through “child swapping” – brokered as an inter-familial cultural practice or as a method to pay off debts. LGBTQI+ individuals, especially individuals in commercial sex, are vulnerable to trafficking. An online group chat room facilitates commercial sex acts for predominantly expatriate men who are looking for boys and increases LGBTQI+ individuals’ vulnerability to trafficking. Women in commercial sex face physical and sexual violence and are reportedly coerced into forced pregnancy and forced marriage; reports acknowledge a correlation between the lack of economic opportunities and an increase in commercial sex.

The limited ability for women and girls in commercial sex to seek justice increases their vulnerability to trafficking. Taxi drivers facilitate the exploitation of children in commercial sex. Forced labor and child sex trafficking occur on fishing vessels in Vanuatu. Foreign tourists aboard boats reportedly approach remote ni-Vanuatu communities and offer money in exchange for marriage with underage girls as a ploy for short-term sexual exploitation.

Traffickers exploit ni-Vanuatu women and girls in sex trafficking near construction projects in Tanna, including in “white houses” which are commercial sex establishments frequented by foreigners and ni-Vanuatu men. Children may also experience conditions indicative of forced labor in the illegal logging industry and in newspaper sales. There are increasing reports of cyberbullying and sextortion of girls coerced into taking explicit images, increasing vulnerability to sex trafficking. Husbands exploit their wives in sex trafficking.

Civil society reports a Vanuatu-based massage parlor and a tourism agency facilitate extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse. Labor traffickers exploit individuals from the PRC, Thailand, Bangladesh, and the Philippines in Vanuatu. Individuals from the PRC may have been forced to work in Vanuatu at projects run by PRC-based companies. Traffickers exploit PRC nationals in the construction sector and in PRC-affiliated businesses, including PRC-affiliated logging companies, and on PRC-affiliated noni-plant farms, and in domestic servitude in Efate, Santo, Malekula, and Tanna islands.

Traffickers target migrant women in the hospitality and tourism sectors and low-skilled foreign workers in high-risk sectors, such as agriculture, mining, fishing, logging, construction, and domestic service. PRC national and South Asian migrant women are particularly at risk for labor trafficking in bars, beauty salons, and massage parlors. Traffickers exploit PRC national women working in modeling and pole dancing for sex trafficking. Bangladeshi criminal groups have lured Bangladeshi individuals with false promises of high-paying job opportunities in Australia, transported them through Fiji, India, and Singapore, and then exploited them in forced labor in the construction industry in Vanuatu.

Some of the victims take out substantial loans to pay relevant travel expenses, which traffickers exploit through debt-based coercion. Foreign fishermen working on Vanuatu-flagged, Taiwan-owned vessels have experienced indicators of forced labor, including deceptive recruitment practices, abuse of vulnerability, excessive overtime, withholding of wages, physical and sexual violence, and abusive living and working conditions on board. Traffickers exploit ni-Vanuatu workers in forced labor under the auspices of seasonal worker programs in Australia and New Zealand. On This Page search > < VANUATU (Tier 2 Watch List) PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS: PROSECUTION PROTECTION PREVENTION TRAFFICKING PROFILE: Tags Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Human Trafficking Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Reports Vanuatu