Tier Definitions. A Guide to TIP Tiers, from the 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report (United States Department of State, 2017) Tier Definition Tier 1 The governments of countries that fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. Tier 2 The governments of countries that do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards. Tier 2 Watch List The government of countries that do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards, and for which: a. The absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing; b. There is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, including increased investigations, prosecution, and convictions of trafficking crimes, increased assistance to victims, and decreasing evidence of complicity in severe forms of trafficking by government officials; or c. The determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional steps over the next year. Tier 3 The governments of countries that do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so. The TVPA lists additional factors to determine whether a country should be on Tier 2 (or Tier 2 Watch List) versus Tier 3: First, the extent to which the country is a country of origin, transit, or destination for severe forms of trafficking; second, the extent to which the country’s government does not meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and, in particular, the extent to which officials or government employees have been complicit in severe forms of trafficking; third, reasonable measures that the government would need to undertake to be in compliance with the minimum standards in light of the government’s resources and capabilities to address and eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons. Figure 1. Data exclusion chart HTI Dataset N=1496 179 countries Excluding years 2002 and 2003 N=1407 178 countries Excluding observations with missing number of people proscuted N=1803 177 countries Excluding observations with negative or zero values for number of people prosecuted N = 807 148 countries Used in analysis N = 781 142 countries Table 2....
