Tier 1 Without the Proof: Guyana’s Trafficking Ranking Demands Disclosure

592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Tier 1 Without the Proof: Guyana’s Trafficking Ranking Demands Disclosure

Pres. Ali and Saju Bhaskar at the opening of EKAA HRIM – one of the most widely publicized TIP cases in Guyana , never made it into the report.

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Guyana’s Tier 1 designation should not be treated as a certificate of success. The report itself describes declining investigations, reduced anti-trafficking funding, shelter closures, weak recruitment oversight, unresolved forced-labor risks, and scant evidence of enforcement in high-risk extractive and foreign-financed worksites. A ranking without the underlying case, inspection, budget-execution, shelter-capacity and victim-outcome data asks the public to accept a conclusion it cannot independently verify.

The most significant issue is not that the report contains no data. It contains enough adverse data to raise serious doubt, while withholding the deeper data needed to explain why those adverse trends were nevertheless compatible with Tier 1.

Guyana has again been placed in Tier 1 in the United States’ 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report—a classification reserved for governments said to fully meet minimum standards for combating human trafficking. But the report’s own narrative raises a fundamental question: where is the hard data that allows the public to verify that conclusion?

A Tier 1 label is not supposed to be public-relations currency. It should be the product of demonstrable performance: credible investigations, successful prosecutions, meaningful victim protection, effective labor oversight, transparent budgets, and verifiable outcomes in the sectors where trafficking risks are greatest.

Instead, the report records warning signs—fewer investigations, fewer victims identified, reduced funding, shelter closures, weak regulation of labor recruitment, unresolved forced-labor concerns, and no reported trafficking victims identified among Chinese workers despite acknowledged risks at China-linked worksites.

Yet Guyana remains Tier 1. The public deserves to know why.

The numbers do not speak for themselves

The report says Guyana initiated 16 trafficking investigations in 2025, down from 31 in 2024. That is nearly a 48 percent decline.

Victim identification also fell, from 416 persons in 2024 to 390 in 2025. In a country experiencing rapid oil-driven growth, substantial inward migration, expanding construction activity, remote mining operations, and increased demand for foreign labor, a fall in identification cannot simply be presented as progress.

More troubling is the protection data. The report says 390 victims were identified, but only 25 were referred to care. That gap requires a full public explanation.

Were the remaining 365 victims offered assistance and refused it? Were they deported, repatriated, released, lost to follow-up, or referred through channels not counted in the report? Did they receive medical treatment, shelter, counselling, legal aid, immigration help, work permits, or compensation? Or were they simply identified on paper and left outside the formal protection system?

Without those answers, the public cannot determine whether the state is actually protecting trafficking survivors or merely producing a headline figure.

Budgets were cut, shelters reportedly closed

The report also records decreases in the funding allocated for both victim protection and prevention.

Protection funding fell from GYD 132.6 million in 2024 to GYD 116.9 million in 2025. Prevention funding reportedly fell from GYD 169.5 million to GYD 83.25 million—more than a halving of the previous year’s allocation.

At the same time, non-governmental organizations reportedly said some shelters were closed in 2025. This is an extraordinary concern. A transition home may have been completed, but one new facility cannot automatically substitute for shelter capacity lost elsewhere—especially in a country where victims may be located in distant interior communities, mining districts, border areas, and urban centers.

The issue is not merely how much money was allocated. The issue is how much was actually spent, on what services, in which regions, for how many victims, and with what results.

An allocation is not an outcome.

Forced-labor risks cannot be managed by silence

The report identifies serious forced-labor risks among workers connected to Chinese state-affiliated projects, China-based mining companies, and Cuban state-linked employment arrangements. It acknowledges that Chinese workers may face conditions indicative of forced labor and that the government did not adequately address trafficking risks in China-affiliated worksites.

Yet the report supplies no meaningful inspection data.

How many Chinese-linked worksites were inspected? How many Chinese workers were privately interviewed without managers, recruiters, interpreters, state officials, or supervisors present? How many employment contracts were reviewed? How many workers had possession of their passports? How many were paid directly? How many complained of recruitment debt, withheld wages, contract substitution, restricted movement, threats, intimidation, or retaliation?

The report says no trafficking victims were identified among Chinese workers. But without the details of the screening process, that statement is impossible to evaluate.

No victims found is not the same as no victims existing.

It may instead mean inspections were weak, interviews were not confidential, workers feared retaliation, language access was inadequate, or inspectors lacked the independence and expertise needed to detect forced labor.

Recruitment remains a glaring loophole

Guyana’s labor market is changing rapidly. Oil, construction, mining, services, infrastructure and related industries are attracting workers from across the region and beyond. In those circumstances, recruitment agencies and labor brokers should be subject to strict oversight.

Yet the report says Guyana still lacks laws prohibiting employers, recruiters and labor agents from charging workers recruitment fees, switching contracts without consent, or withholding wages to compel work. It also says the government has been reviewing recruitment legislation for four consecutive years without completing the reform.

That is not a minor legislative delay. It is a structural vulnerability.

Recruitment debt, deceptive job offers, contract substitution, wage withholding and document retention are well-known pathways into forced labor.

A government cannot credibly claim robust prevention while leaving the recruitment chain largely unregulated.

One conviction is not proof of success

Guyana recorded one trafficking conviction in 2025—the same number as the previous year.

One conviction may be important to the survivor involved. It may reflect real work by police, prosecutors and support personnel. But it cannot, by itself, demonstrate that the national anti-trafficking system is functioning effectively.

The report itself identifies a slow judicial process, limited government presence in the interior, inadequate monitoring in high-risk areas, and a legal requirement for victim testimony that can lead to prosecutions being dropped when survivors decline to testify.

These are not signs of a fully reliable accountability system. They are indicators of a system that still depends heavily on traumatized victims carrying the burden of prosecution, even where the state should be capable of building cases through financial records, phone data, recruitment documents, travel records, payrolls, witness testimony, digital evidence and worksite inspections.

The reported settlement of a labor-trafficking case is especially troubling. If evidence supported a trafficking charge, why was the matter resolved by directing payment of unpaid wages and transportation home rather than pursuing a criminal case?

Wage recovery is necessary, but it is not a substitute for accountability where coercion and exploitation may amount to forced labor.

The questions Guyana must answer

The Government of Guyana, the Ministerial Task Force on Trafficking in Persons, the Guyana Police Force, the Ministry of Labor and Manpower Planning, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the U.S. State Department should answer the following questions publicly and with documents.

On the Tier 1 decision

1. What objective criteria, benchmarks and evidence were used to conclude that Guyana fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking?

2. What specific improvements outweighed the decline in investigations, victim identification, protection funding and prevention funding?

3. Did the assessment include any formal risk analysis of oil-sector growth, mining expansion, labor migration, major infrastructure projects and cross-border recruitment?

4. What conditions, if any, would have caused Guyana to be placed on Tier 1 Watch List or downgraded to Tier 2?

On investigations and prosecutions

5. Of the 16 investigations initiated in 2025, how many remain active, how many were closed, how many led to charges, and how many were referred for prosecution?

6. How many trafficking suspects were arrested, granted bail, remanded, convicted, acquitted, discharged, or remain before the courts?

7. How many prosecutions were withdrawn or discontinued because victims declined, could not safely testify, were repatriated, disappeared, or could not be located?

8. How many trafficking cases have been pending for more than one year, two years, three years and four years?

9. What was the full factual basis for the labor-trafficking case settled through payment of wages and transportation, and why was criminal prosecution not pursued to conclusion?

10. How many assets were restrained, forfeited or recovered from alleged traffickers in 2025?

On victims and services

11. Why were only 25 of 390 identified victims referred to care?

12. What services were provided to each category of victim: shelter, food, health care, counselling, legal support, immigration assistance, interpreters, education, employment support, repatriation and long-term reintegration?

13. How many identified victims declined assistance, and what reasons did they give?

14. How many victims were housed in state-run, NGO-operated and private facilities?

15. Which shelters closed in 2025, where were they located, what was their capacity, and what services replaced them?

16. How many victims were unable to obtain shelter because no bed, safe location, transport or specialized service was available?

17. How much of the GYD 116.9 million allocated for victim protection was actually spent, and which agencies or organizations received it?

18.How much restitution was ordered, paid, outstanding or enforced in trafficking cases?

On labour recruitment and inspection

19. How many recruitment agencies, placement services and labor brokers currently operate in Guyana.?

20.How many are registered, licensed, inspected, sanctioned, suspended or prosecuted?

21. How many workers reported paying recruitment fees, being charged for job placement, having their contracts changed, losing access to their passports, or having wages withheld?

22. When will Guyana enact enforceable laws prohibiting worker-paid recruitment fees, contract substitution and wage withholding as coercive practices?

23. What agency is responsible for monitoring recruiters before workers are placed in mines, construction sites, hotels, domestic work, agriculture, forestry and oil-related employment?

On high-risk foreign workforces

24. How many inspections were conducted at Chinese-owned, Chinese state-affiliated or Belt and Road-linked worksites?

25. How many Chinese workers were interviewed privately, in a language they understood, without their employer, recruiter, interpreter or supervisor present?

26. How many workers were screened for recruitment debt, passport retention, contract substitution, wage withholding, restricted movement, threats and coercion?

27. How many Cuban workers remained in Guyana after the bilateral health agreement ended, and how many received direct employment, work permits, full wages, independent accommodation and protection?

28. How many complaints were received from Cuban workers, and how many were investigated?

29. What safeguards are now in place to prevent foreign-government employment arrangements from concealing forced-labor conditions?

On the interior and mining areas

30. How many anti-trafficking operations, inspections and victim screenings were conducted in Regions 1, 7, 8 and 9?

31. How many mines, bars, hotels, shops, camps and transportation routes in interior communities were inspected?

32. How many trained officers, labor inspectors, social workers and interpreters are stationed in high-risk interior regions?

33. How does the government ensure that hotline services function where cellular coverage is poor or unavailable?

34. How many reports from the hotlines resulted in an investigation, rescue, victim identification, referral or prosecution?

Disclosure must replace ceremony

Guyana should not be asked to reject a favorable international ranking. But neither should the Government be allowed to celebrate a Tier 1 label without producing the evidence needed to sustain it.

The country needs a public anti-trafficking performance dashboard, updated at least quarterly, showing investigations, arrests, prosecutions, convictions, pending cases, victims identified, victims receiving services, shelter capacity, inspections, recruitment-agency enforcement, hotline outcomes, restitution orders, budget allocations and actual expenditure.

It should be broken down by region, nationality, gender, age, trafficking type, sector and case status—while protecting the identities and safety of survivors.

Until that happens, Tier 1 risks becoming a badge without an audit trail: a diplomatic endorsement unsupported by the level of transparency that trafficking survivors, vulnerable workers and the Guyanese public deserve.