Taiwan’s efforts against human trafficking have successfully won international approval. The US State Department issued its 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report (2019 TIP Report) at 9 PM of June 20th, 2019 which lists Taiwan as a Tier 1 country. Taiwan has been given this ranking for 10 consecutive years in a row. It is an indicator that the partnership between the government and NGOs in the battle against human trafficking has worked fruitfully and once again placed Taiwan among other outstanding countries in preventing the crime.The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) expressed that during the appointment of Vice President of the Executive Yuan (EY) in 2007, President Tsai promoted the establishment of an integrated mechanism for the "Cabinet Anti-TIP Task Force", which was combined with the resources of various groups such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), experts and scholars, central and local governments. It will coordinate and roll over the review and lay a good foundation for effective prevention of human trafficking. In 2018, the number of foreign human trafficking victims was 120, a new low in the past years. The number of suspects prosecuted in human trafficking crimes in all of the district prosecutor offices was 112, which as well was the lowest in history. It indicated that Taiwan made good efforts on its preventive measures and obtained the U.S. positive rating.MOI further stated that anti-human trafficking as a global campaign is also a manifestation of the importance that countries attach to human rights. The Tier 1 country does not mean that there is no human trafficking case in our country, but that both our people and the government recognize the severity of human trafficking violations. Thus, Taiwan has been making efforts to find ways to prevent and protect victims. It is worthy for us to be proud of the honour and continue to maintain. MOI emphasized the issue of preventing human trafficking is extensive, and authorities such as Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Transportation and Communications and Council of Agriculture should cooperate with NGOs to progress together. In this report, it recommended that Taiwan authorities should strengthen the supervision on Taiwanese fishing vessels; interview, identify and protect the potential exploited fishing workers; propose amendments to the HTPCA and the immigration policy for decreasing the charge of excessive recruitment and service fees. The aforementioned works are all followed up by EY.In addition, the US government began to promote the "Forced Labor Outreach and Targeting Initiative" to prohibit the import of products involving forced labor this year. Once implemented, the human trafficking issue will be no longer limited to crimes of general labor exploitation and sexual exploitation. In the future, such as agricultural, fishery, labor-intensive and even high-tech products produced by forced labor may be affected.MOI pointed out that in order to be closer to the international community, EY approved the "2019-2020 New Guardian Action Plan" in early January this year, which will further strengthen the coordination and cooperation mechanism for combating human trafficking. In the mechanism, it is expanded to 19 central authorities to be the membership and the implementation of prevention work has been carried out in a more comprehensive manner. Taiwan will continue to implement human rights protection, fulfill the responsibility of the global citizen, and move towards the second 10-year milestone.
