Sint Maarten (Tier 3)
The Government of Sint Maarten1 does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so, even considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Sint Maarten was downgraded to Tier 3. Despite the lack of significant efforts, the government took some steps to address trafficking, including investigating a potential trafficking case. However, the government did not report prosecuting or convicting any traffickers or identifying any trafficking victims for the second consecutive year. Further, the government was not equipped to provide services to trafficking victims; it did not have shelters, did not allocate funding, and did not have formal arrangements with service providers. The government did not update its national action plan (NAP), which expired in 2018, and interagency coordination was severely lacking. Officials consistently conflated human trafficking and migrant smuggling, hindering the effectiveness of the government’s meager anti-trafficking efforts.
1Sint Maarten is a semi-autonomous entity within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. For the purpose of this report, Sint Maarten is not a “country” to which the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act apply. This narrative reflects how Sint Maarten would be assessed if it were a separate, independent country. However, the Kingdom is an important contributor to the Government of Sint Maarten’s anti-trafficking efforts.