AFGHANISTAN:  Tier 2 
Afghanistan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Internal trafficking is more prevalent than transnational trafficking. The majority of Afghan trafficking victims are children who end up in carpet making and brick factories, domestic servitude, commercial sexual exploitation, begging, transnational drug smuggling, and assistant truck driving within Afghanistan, as well as in the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. Afghan boys are also subjected to forced labor in Iran in the construction and agricultural sectors. The majority of Afghan victims in Pakistan are women and girls subjected to trafficking for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, including through forced marriages. Some Afghan families knowingly sell their children into prostitution, including for bacha baazi—where men, sometimes including government officials and security forces, use young boys for social and sexual entertainment. Some law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and judges accept bribes from or use their relationships with perpetrators of bacha baazi to allow them to escape punishment. Other families send their children to obtain employment through labor brokers and the children end up in forced labor. Opium-farming families sometimes sell their children to settle debts with opium traffickers. According to the government and the UN, insurgent groups forcibly recruit and use children as suicide bombers. Boys from Badakhshan, Takhar, Baghlan, Kunduz, and Balkh provinces in the north, as well as those traveling unaccompanied, are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Some entire Afghan families are trapped in debt bondage in the brick-making industry in eastern Afghanistan.
Men, women, and children in Afghanistan often pay intermediaries to assist them in finding employment, primarily in Iran, Pakistan, India, Europe, or North America; some of these intermediaries force Afghan citizens into labor or prostitution after their arrival. Afghan women and girls are subjected to prostitution and domestic servitude primarily in Pakistan, Iran, and India. Afghan boys and men are subjected to forced labor and debt bondage in agriculture and construction, primarily in Iran, Pakistan, Greece, Turkey, and the Gulf states. Some Afghan boys are found in sex trafficking in Greece after paying high fees to be smuggled into the country. There were reports of women and girls from the Philippines, Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Sri Lanka, and China subjected to sex trafficking in Afghanistan. Under the pretense of high-paying employment opportunities, some labor recruiting agencies lure foreign workers to Afghanistan, including from Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan; the recruiters subject these migrants to forced labor after arrival.
The Government of Afghanistan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government acceded to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol, increased convictions of offenders under the trafficking law, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) completed and published a national inquiry into the practice of bacha baazi. However, the government’s prosecution and victim protection efforts remained inadequate.While victims of trafficking were routinely prosecuted and convicted as criminals for moral crimes, the government failed to hold the vast majority of traffickers criminally accountable for their offenses. Official complicity remained a serious problem and political will to combat the crime was low. Law enforcement and judicial officials continued to have a limited understanding

of human trafficking, and the government did not develop or employ systematic procedures for the identification and referral of victims to protective services.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AFGHANISTAN:
Cease the penalization of victims for offenses committed as a direct result of being subjected to trafficking; increase prosecutions and convictions under the 2008 anti-trafficking law, while respecting due process; investigate and prosecute officials suspected of being complicit in trafficking; consider amending the 2008 anti- trafficking law to prohibit and penalize all forms of trafficking in persons; strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Interior (MOI)’s anti-trafficking/smuggling units, including by increasing the number of staff in each region and ensuring their ability to differentiate between smuggling and trafficking; continue to increase the capacity of the High Commission for Combating Crimes of Abduction and Human Trafficking/Smuggling (high commission), and further implement the anti-trafficking national action plan; educate officials at national, provincial, and local levels on the definition of human trafficking, as well as identification, protection, and law enforcement strategies; improve efforts to collect, analyze, and accurately report counter-trafficking data; and implement culturally appropriate long-term victim rehabilitation programs for boys designed for their specialized needs.

PROSECUTION
The government made modest law enforcement efforts; convictions of trafficking offenders increased but official complicity remained a serious problem. The 2008 Law Countering Abduction and Human Trafficking/Smuggling, along with Article 516 of the penal code, prohibits many but not all forms of human trafficking.The law defines sex trafficking of a child only when coercion is used. The law prescribes between eight and 15 years’ imprisonment for persons convicted of some forms of labor trafficking and prescribes penalties of up to life imprisonment for those convicted of some forms of sex trafficking.The 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law and other provisions of the penal code include penalties for most forms of trafficking.These penalties are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape.The interagency high commission reported the government convicted 23 offenders under the trafficking statute, an increase from 14 convictions in 2013. The courts sentenced these offenders to terms of imprisonment ranging from one to 15 years.
Law enforcement and judicial officials continued to have a limited understanding of trafficking. In Dari—the language spoken most widely in Afghanistan—the same word is used for both human trafficking and human smuggling, compounding the confusion. The MOI had a central anti-trafficking/smuggling unit staffed with 16 officers and an additional two officers in each of the 34 provinces; however, officers were not solely dedicated to anti-trafficking, and officials noted two officers per province was

insufficient. International organizations and NGOs continued to provide training in eight provinces to police, prosecutors, and other government officials on investigating and prosecuting trafficking cases; the governor’s office in each of those provinces provided venues for some of the trainings.
Official complicity in trafficking remained a serious problem. Reports indicated some government and security officials engaged in the practice of bacha baazi.The AIHRC’s report revealed the majority of those who engage in bacha baazi pay bribes to or have relationships with law enforcement, prosecutors, or judges that effectively exempt them from prosecution. Reports indicated some law enforcement officials facilitated trafficking and raped sex trafficking victims. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government officials complicit in human trafficking offenses.