Ranking system
The report divides nations into tiers based on their compliance with standards outlined in the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). These tiers are:
🔴 Tier 1 countries whose governments fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards.
🔴 Tier 2 countries whose governments do not fully comply with all of TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
Tier 2 watchlist countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards and:
The absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing; or
here is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year; or
The determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year.
🔴 Tier 3 countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.
There are also a few special cases (Special Tier) such as Yemen, where their civil conflict and humanitarian crisis make gaining information difficult; and Sint Maarten, where the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma has made reporting difficult.