In an annual human trafficking report released Tuesday, the U.S. State Department said that Myanmar had moved off the list of worst human trafficking offenders, but that China had moved into the lowest category with North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Syria as a worst offender.
Senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump said that stopping human trafficking was a “major foreign policy priority” for the Trump administration, according to The Associated Press.
“As a mother, this is much more than a policy priority,” she said at the ceremony where the report was unveiled, the AP reported. “It is a clarion call into action in defense of the vulnerable and the exploited.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cited the roughly 20 million human trafficking victims worldwide as an illustration that much more work needs to be done, the AP reported.
“Regrettably, our challenge is enormous,” Tillerson said. “Human trafficking is becoming more nuanced and more difficult to identify, Much of these activities are going underground, and they’re going online,” the AP reported.
The FBI said human trafficking was the “third-largest criminal activity in the world,” and ICE called it “one of the most heinous crimes” that it investigates.
The demotion of China was seen as the first public rebuke of China by the Trump administration, the AP reported. Trump has been seen as avoiding criticism of China as he seeks China’s help with North Korea. The report said that China was not making significant efforts to stop trafficking, and that it may still be complicit in forced labor practices.
Some Twitter users praised Tillerson and the administration for the report. Others criticized Ivanka Trump’s Chinese shoe factories.
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