PREVENTION
The government improved anti-trafficking prevention efforts.The government continued to implement its national action plan and wide-scale public awareness efforts on transnational sex and labor trafficking, including through events, print media, television, movies, and radio. The Coordination Council on Issues of Child Labor conducted a nationwide campaign about the illegality and risks of using child labor in the cotton harvest by posting bulletins and fliers in schools, colleges and lyceums, distribution of printed information on ILO Convention 182 to administrative officials throughout the country, and hosting roundtables and seminars on child labor. Despite these efforts, local officials in some districts violated the decree banning the use of child labor and mobilized children for the cotton harvest. Eleven professional college directors and two farms were fined for using child labor to pick cotton. The government reported farms paid the levied fines; however, it is unclear if the college directors similarly paid the fines. A limited number of students were able to successfully use a government regulation on the prohibition of the cotton harvest interfering with school work to receive an exemption from the harvest. With government approval, in 2014, the ILO began a survey on recruitment practices and working conditions in agriculture, especially the cotton sector.The government agreed with the World Bank and ILO to allow ILO to monitor the 2015- 2017 cotton harvests for child and forced labor in five World Bank-funded project areas, which comprise approximately 60 percent of Uzbekistan’s cotton-producing territory. One of the projects includes a cotton harvest mechanization component, which will serve as a preliminary model for the government’s plan to increasingly mechanize the harvest and reduce some of the future demand for manual labor. The government also continued to obtain cotton harvesting machines and planned the allocation of the machines to the regions that are most susceptible to labor violations.
The government continued to provide NGOs venues for training programs and awareness-raising activities, as well as free billboard advertising space. The government did not conduct efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts. Uzbekistan was reportedly a destination country for Indian men engaging in sex tourism, including potential child sex tourism. The government provided anti-trafficking training or guidance for its diplomatic personnel.

VENEZUELA:  Tier 3 
Venezuela is a source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Venezuelan women and girls, including some lured from poor interior regions to urban and tourist centers, are subjected to sex trafficking within the country. NGOs continue to report Venezuelan women are subjected to forced prostitution in Caribbean islands, particularly Aruba, Curacao, and Trinidad and Tobago. Venezuelan children are exploited, frequently by their families, in domestic servitude in areas such as cooking, cleaning, and childcare within the country.Venezuelan officials and international organizations have reported identifying sex and labor trafficking victims from South American, Caribbean,Asian, and African countries withinVenezuela. Ecuadorian children and women residing inVenezuela are subjected to forced labor in the informal sector and domestic servitude. Reports indicate some of the estimated 30,000 Cuban citizens,

particularly doctors, working in Venezuela on government social programs in exchange for the Venezuelan government’s provision of resources to the Cuban government may have experienced treatment indicative of forced labor. Indicators of forced labor reported by some Cubans participating in the program include chronic underpayment of wages, mandatory long hours, and threats of retaliatory actions to the citizens and their families if they leave the program.
The Government of Venezuela does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.Authorities convicted three sex traffickers and reported training government officials on human trafficking.The lack of reliable data on government anti-trafficking efforts made these efforts difficult to assess. The government reported identifying and assisting some trafficking victims; however, it did not provide detailed information on assistance provided and victim services remained inadequate. Publicly available information indicated many law enforcement efforts under trafficking statutes dealt with illegal adoption. The extent of efforts to investigate internal forced labor, to assist children in prostitution, or to improve interagency coordination to address trafficking was unclear.

RECOMMENDATIONS   FOR VENEZUELA:
Provide specialized services for trafficking victims, including child sex trafficking victims, working in partnership with civil society organizations and other service providers; strengthen and document efforts to investigate and prosecute cases of sex trafficking and forced labor, and convict and punish traffickers; develop and publish an anti-trafficking action plan and allocate resources to implement this plan; enhance interagency cooperation, perhaps through forming a permanent anti-trafficking working group; implement formal and proactive procedures for identifying trafficking victims among vulnerable populations, such as people in prostitution, and for referring victims for care; continue to train government officials on how to identify and respond to potential human trafficking cases; issue guidance to clarify that cases of child prostitution should be handled as child sex trafficking; and improve data collection on government anti-trafficking efforts and make this data publicly available.

PROSECUTION
The government appeared to increase efforts to hold traffickers criminally accountable, though the lack of comprehensive public data on investigations, prosecutions, and convictions made overall law enforcement efforts against human trafficking difficult to assess. Venezuelan law prohibits most forms of human trafficking through a 2007 law on women’s rights and a 2005 law on organized crime amended in 2012; these laws prescribe punishments of 20 to 30 years’ imprisonment for trafficking of women and girls, for transnational trafficking of men and boys, and for internal trafficking of men and boys when carried out by a member of an organized criminal group of three or more individuals. The

penalties for these trafficking crimes are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with penalties prescribed underVenezuelan law for other serious crimes, such as rape. In cases of internal trafficking involving male victims, prosecutors could bring charges against traffickers under other statutes.The law diverges from the 2000 UNTIP Protocol by penalizing illegal adoption as human trafficking. Venezuela’s legislature did not pass a draft anti-trafficking law, first introduced in 2010, during the year.
Venezuelan authorities did not report how many total trafficking cases were investigated or how many individuals were prosecuted or convicted for human trafficking in 2014.According to government websites and media reports, many cases pursued under trafficking laws during the year involved illegal adoption, although officials initiated the prosecution of at least one transnational forced labor case investigated in 2013. Media coverage indicated some child sex trafficking cases might have been investigated as other crimes, including child prostitution. According to press reports, three women were convicted of child sex trafficking in January 2014; two were sentenced to eight years and nine months’ imprisonment, while one trafficker was sentenced to 18 years and six months’ imprisonment. In comparison, there were no reported trafficking convictions in 2013.Authorities provided some anti-trafficking training to hundreds of law enforcement, justice, immigration, and other government officials. The government reported the Ministry of Interior, Justice, and Peace’s organized crime office (ONDOFT) worked with the women’s ministry to train 520 government officials in Nueva Esparta state on human trafficking in the judicial system, including prosecutors and justice officials in 2014. Authorities did not report cooperating with foreign governments on trafficking investigations during the year. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking.