"Vietnam, Cambodia Fall in Rank in Annual US Human Trafficking Report", 20 June 2019

The U.S. State Department downgraded Vietnam and Cambodia to its next-to-lowest ranking in an annual report on human trafficking...pointing to what it called both countries’ continuing failure to make “significant efforts” to combat the trade.

...Vietnam finally fell to Tier 2 Watch List on this year’s report because “the government did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period,” the State Department said in its report.

...Media reports showed adults were forced to labor in government-run drug treatment centers...and children as young as six were exploited in garment factories or forced to beg in the streets, the report said.

...Cambodia, also previously ranked at Tier 2, fell to Tier 2 Watch List...because of a drop in the number of government attempts to “adequately collect or share key information on law enforcement efforts,” the TIP report said.

...“[C]redible reports of official complicity with unscrupulous business owners who subjected thousands of men, women, and children throughout the country to human trafficking via debt-based coercion.”

...Meanwhile, Laos—previously ranked at Tier 3—was moved up to Tier 2 Watch List for having made “key achievements”....

...[I]n Myanmar...though authorities continued to prosecute and convict traffickers, “there were reports that government officials were complicit in both sex- and labor-trafficking, including by hindering law enforcement efforts against the perpetrators,” the State Department said....