Malta has been downgraded in the US State Department’s watch list in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report. The country fell from Tier 1, which includes most Western European countries, to Tier 2 alongside Italy and Albania between the 2023 and 2024 reports.
The 2024 report found that human traffickers exploit both domestic and foreign victims in Malta, including women from Southeast Asia working as domestic workers and women from Central and Eastern Europe working in nightclubs. Refugees and asylum-seekers residing in Malta are vulnerable to trafficking in the country’s construction, hospitality, and domestic work sectors.
The TIP Report noted “significant efforts” by the Government of Malta to meet standards for the elimination of trafficking, including a trafficking investigation unit, an anti-trafficking working group to guide co-ordination, and an additional hotline for victims to receive referrals to services. A government budget for preventing trafficking, though, decreased significantly from €300,000 in 2022 (and the same in the two previous years) to €50,000 in 2023.
Training for judges in this area “remained inadequate” and courts continued to frequently overturn convictions on appeal for administrative technicalities. Restitution or compensation for trafficking victims had reportedly never been paid, and the Government “did not make concrete efforts” to increase oversight and regulation of massage parlours. These factors contributed to the downgrading of Malta’s status in the list.
The State Department’s key recommendation was to increase efforts to vigorously and expeditiously investigate and prosecute trafficking crimes. Other recommendations covered increasing efforts to convict traffickers, including complicit officials, and seeking adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms.
Officials should “proactively identify” trafficking victims, including Maltese nationals, especially among vulnerable populations, including children, migrant workers, and asylum-seekers and increase co-operation with civil society on how to identify, refer, shelter and support victims. The report also recommended a change in the law to ensure that victims are not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked.
Training for front-line officials, police officers, prosecutors, and judges should focus on the use of psychological coercion and fraud as means of trafficking, with judges informed about the severity of trafficking crimes and the full range of penalties available.
Strong regulations and oversight of labour recruitment companies should be enforced, including the prohibition of recruitment fees charged to migrant workers, and accountability for fraudulent labour recruiters. Proactively informing foreign worker groups in their native languages about their rights and responsibilities, and how to seek assistance, would also help to tackle trafficking.
The Government should also consider removing the maximum limits for compensation (€23,300) and damages (€10,000), and allow confiscated assets from traffickers to be awarded to victims. The law does provide victims a two-month reflection period to recover and contemplate cooperation with law enforcement officials.
A wider picture is given of trafficking in Libya, just 350km across the sea from Malta. More than 20,000 migrants and refugees were returned to Libya in the year leading up to August 2023, including to detention centres. A UN report in 2023 also found that human trafficking was organised within the Libyan Government or state-affiliated organisations. Many NGOs and international experts were therefore critical of co-operation between Malta and the Libyan authorities which “often resulted in the occupants of vessels identified in the Libyan search-and-rescue area being returned to Libyan shores.”
The full report is available to read at this link: https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-trafficking-in-persons-report
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