Human trafficking in Jamaica
Encyclopedia
Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...

 for the purposes of sexual exploitation
Sexual slavery
Sexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...

 and forced labor. The majority of victims are poor Jamaican women and girls, and increasingly boys
Trafficking of children
Trafficking of children is a form of human trafficking. It is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receiving of children for the purpose of exploitation....

, who are trafficked from rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

 to urban
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

 and tourist areas for commercial sexual exploitation. Victims are typically recruited by family members or newspaper advertisements promoting work as spa attendants, masseuses, or dancers; after being recruited, however, victims are coerced into prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

. Jamaican children also may be subjected to conditions of forced labor
Child labor
Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries...

 as domestic servants. Sex tourism
Sex tourism
Sex tourism is travel to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes.The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary...

 in resort areas has been identified as a problem. Some trafficking of women from the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...

, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 into Jamaica’s sex trade has been reported. Some Jamaican women and girls have been trafficked to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, the United States, the Bahamas
The Bahamas
The Bahamas , officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a nation consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets . It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola , northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States...

, and other Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 destinations for commercial sexual exploitation.

The Government of Jamaica does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. During the reporting period, the government increased activities to prevent human trafficking, but its efforts to punish traffickers and assist victims remained inadequate.

Prosecution

The Government of Jamaica maintained anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts during the reporting period, but did not punish any trafficking offenders. Legislatively
Parliament of Jamaica
The Parliament of Jamaica is the legislative branch of the government of Jamaica. It is a bicameral body, composed of an appointed Senate and an elected House of Representatives....

, the government prohibits all forms of trafficking through its comprehensive Trafficking in Persons Act, which became effective on March 1, 2007, and which prescribes penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment, penalties that are sufficiently stringent. This law also prohibits 25person’s passport as a means of keeping an individual in labor or service. During the reporting period, the government charged four suspects with trafficking under its new law; these cases remain pending, in addition to six prosecutions from the previous year. The government did not convict or sentence any traffickers during the reporting period. The government also dedicated six police officers to the National Task Force against Trafficking in Persons, an interagency body that coordinates anti-trafficking activities, and reconstituted the organized-crime division of its police force to focus more attention on human trafficking crimes. A vetted police Airport Interdiction Task Force, created through a memorandum of understanding
Memorandum of understanding
A memorandum of understanding is a document describing a bilateral or multilateral agreement between parties. It expresses a convergence of will between the parties, indicating an intended common line of action. It is often used in cases where parties either do not imply a legal commitment or in...

 between Jamaica and the United States in 2005, investigates cases of drug trafficking and human trafficking at ports of entry. In conjunction with the International Organization for Migration
International Organization for Migration
The International Organization for Migration is an intergovernmental organization. It was initially established in 1951 as the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration to help resettle people displaced by World War II....

 (IOM), a large number of police, consular, and judicial officials
Judiciary of Jamaica
The judiciary of Jamaica is based on the judiciary of the United Kingdom.The courts are organized at four levels, with additional provision for appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The Court of Appeal is the highest appellate court. The Supreme Court has unlimited...

 received anti-trafficking training. No reports of official complicity with human trafficking were received in 2007.

Protection

During the reporting period, the government showed limited efforts to provide victims with access to medical, psychological, legal, and witness protection
Witness protection
Witness protection is protection of a threatened witness or any person involved in the justice system, including defendants and other clients, before, during and after a trial, usually by police...

 services. Specialized shelters for trafficking victims, especially for victims of commercial sexual exploitation, remain unavailable, although child trafficking victims have access to generalized government shelters for care. Shelter services for adult victims remain lacking, although adult victims are sometimes housed in hotels or other temporary facilities. Pursuant to its anti-trafficking statute, Jamaican authorities encourage victims to assist in the investigation and prosecution of their traffickers. Victims are not penalized for immigration violations or other unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked. Jamaica provides temporary residency for foreign trafficking victims and other legal alternatives to deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...

 to countries where victims would face hardship or retribution. In 2007, the government assisted IOM’s repatriation
Repatriation
Repatriation is the process of returning a person back to one's place of origin or citizenship. This includes the process of returning refugees or soldiers to their place of origin following a war...

 of a trafficking victim from Burma who was exploited for five years as a domestic servant.

Prevention

The government increased anti-trafficking prevention activities during the reporting period. Government officials condemned human trafficking in public statements and presentations, in addition to warning more than 250 students about the dangers of human trafficking. Anti-trafficking flyers and materials were disseminated widely. The government also tightened issuance of exotic dancer
Exotic dancer
The terms exotic dancer and exotic dance can have different meanings in different parts of the world and depending on context. In the erotic sense, "exotic dance" is a often used to refer to practitioners of striptease...

 permits to Jamaican hotel establishments, and eliminated their use in night clubs. Efforts to identify victims of trafficking among holders of these permits were intensified during the reporting period, and the government reduced the total number of permits to eight. Increased government collaboration with Jamaica’s hotel and tourism industry would assist efforts to prevent child sex tourism
Child sex tourism
Child sex tourism is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, that is commercially-facilitated child sexual abuse...

 in resort areas; despite reported sexual exploitation of Jamaican children by foreign tourists, no investigations or prosecutions of such suspected criminal activity were reported by the government. The government made efforts to address demand for commercial sex acts by conducting high-profile raids on hotels and nightclubs.
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