PREVENTION
The government sustained efforts to prevent trafficking, with multiple government agencies involved in anti-trafficking efforts.The Malawi Network Against Child Trafficking, comprising government officials, NGOs, and religious leaders, held six regional trafficking awareness meetings and met twice at the national level. The anti-trafficking board established by the new anti-trafficking bill is designed to provide national-level guidance on combating trafficking. Malawi continued to lack a national action plan to address trafficking in persons. The majority of public awareness campaigns were coordinated at the district level with NGO partners.The government conducted 215 child labor inspections from June-December 2014; however, it did not report on the total number of inspections conducted. As of January 2015, the Ministry of Labor employed 29 district labor officers and 120 labor inspectors.The government did not make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts or forced labor, and it made no efforts to address child sex tourism.The government did not provide anti-trafficking training or guidance for its diplomatic personnel. In partnership with a foreign donor, the government provided Malawian troops with anti-trafficking training prior to their deployment abroad on international peacekeeping  missions.

MALAYSIA:  Tier  2 Watch List    
Malaysia is a destination and, to a lesser extent, a source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and women and children subjected to sex trafficking. The majority of trafficking victims are among the estimated two million documented and more than two million undocumented foreign workers in Malaysia. Foreign workers—primarily from Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nepal, Burma, and other Southeast Asian countries, often voluntarily migrate to Malaysia in search of greater economic opportunities. Some migrants are subjected to forced labor or debt bondage by their employers, employment agents, or labor recruiters. Many foreign workers are employed by recruiting or outsourcing companies rather than by the factory or plantation where they work, making workers more vulnerable

to exploitative labor conditions and limiting the ability of factories, manufacturers, and employers to address some labor concerns. In addition, recruitment and contracting fees are sometimes deducted from workers’ wages, increasing workers’ vulnerability to debt bondage. In accordance with governmental regulations, the burden of paying immigration and employment authorization fees is placed on foreign workers. Authorities report large organized crime syndicates are responsible for some instances of trafficking. Reports allege some corrupt officials impede efforts to address trafficking crimes.
Some foreign migrant workers on agricultural and palm oil plantations, at construction sites, in the electronics industry, and in homes as domestic workers are subjected to practices indicative of forced labor, such as restricted movement, wage fraud, contract violations, passport confiscation, and imposition of significant debts by recruitment agents or employers. Some employers withhold an average of six months’ wages from foreign domestic workers to recoup recruitment agency fees and other debts. Some forced labor victims in Malaysian waters, including Cambodian and Burmese men on Thai fishing boats, reportedly escape in Malaysian territory. Due to concerns about domestic servitude, the Cambodian government prohibits its nationals from traveling to Malaysia for domestic work; however, some Cambodian women enter Malaysia to work despite this ban and some are subjected to domestic servitude. Some Indonesian domestic workers are subjected to domestic servitude in the Middle East after transiting Malaysia en route to these countries to circumvent anti-trafficking protections initiated by the Indonesian government. A significant number of young women, mainly from Southeast Asia, and to a much lesser extent Africa, are forced into prostitution although recruited ostensibly for legal work in Malaysian restaurants, hotels, and beauty salons. Some Vietnamese women and girls enter into brokered marriages in Malaysia and are forced into prostitution.
Refugees in Malaysia—including Rohingya men, women, and children—lack formal status or the ability to obtain legal work permits, leaving them vulnerable to trafficking. Many incur large smuggling debts, which traffickers use to subject some refugees to debt bondage. An estimated 80,000 Filipino Muslims without legal status, including 10,000 children, reside in Sabah, with some vulnerable to trafficking. Children from refugee communities in Peninsular Malaysia are reportedly subjected to forced begging. A small number of Malaysian citizens are subjected to trafficking internally and have been subjected to sex trafficking in Australia, France, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
The Government of Malaysia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. In 2014, the government consulted with civil society stakeholders to draft and propose amendments strengthening the existing anti-trafficking law and addressing concerns raised in previous Trafficking in Persons Reports, including by allowing trafficking victims to move freely and work, and for NGOs to run the facilities. The amendments remained pending passage by Parliament at the end of the reporting period. The government adopted a pilot project to allow a limited number of victims to work outside government facilities. Authorities continued to provide assistance to foreign victims housed in government facilities for one to six months while under protection orders; these victims had limited freedom of movement and could not work outside the facilities. Malaysia more than doubled the number of trafficking investigations and substantially increased prosecutions, but the government convicted

only three traffickers for forced labor and one for passport retention, a decrease from the nine traffickers it convicted in 2013. Malaysia also continued efforts in an expansive prevention campaign that raised awareness about trafficking.

RECOMMENDATIONS   FOR MALAYSIA:
Sign into law and implement amendments to the anti-trafficking law to allow trafficking victims to travel, work, and reside outside government facilities, including while under protection orders; increase efforts to arrest, investigate, prosecute, convict, and punish traffickers, including complicit officials; provide all victims equal opportunity to receive protective services that are not contingent on their participation in prosecutions against traffickers; effectively enforce the law prohibiting employers from confiscating passports; improve victim identification efforts and implement procedures to identify labor trafficking victims among vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers; enable trafficking victims in government facilities to make phone calls more than once per month; allocate sufficient funding to NGOs that provide victims in government facilities access to legal services and effective counseling, including in their native languages whenever possible; offer legal alternatives to removal to countries in which victims would face retribution or hardship; increase and strengthen labor inspections to identify instances of forced labor; increase training for law enforcement and judicial officials on how to effectively address all trafficking cases, including the identification of labor trafficking victims, employing a victim-centered framework; expand implementation of the directive requiring prosecutors to prepare victims for judicial proceedings at least two weeks prior to trial; increase efforts to educate migrant workers of their rights, legal recourses, and remedies against traffickers; provide a dedicated budget to the National Anti-Trafficking and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Council (MAPO); and increase transnational cooperation with other governments in the region on enforcing anti-trafficking laws.