The United States has said that the Lebanese government does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking although it is making significant efforts to combat it.
In its annual Trafficking in Persons report, the State Department said Lebanon may be a transit point for Eastern European women and children destined for forced prostitution in other countries in the region.
The report also said Asian and African women, who voluntarily and legally come to Lebanon to work in domestic service with the assistance of recruitment agencies, often find themselves in conditions of forced labor.
Turning to the issue of sex trade, the Department said: "The Lebanese government's "artiste" visa program, which facilitated the entry of 4,518 women from Eastern Europe, Morocco, and Tunisia in 2009 to work in the adult entertainment industry, serves to sustain a significant sex trade and facilitates sex trafficking."
The report recommended the government to criminalize all forms of human trafficking and enact the draft Labor Law amendment extending legal protections to foreign workers.
It also called for developing and instituting formal procedures to identify victims of trafficking among vulnerable populations, such as women holding "artiste" visas and domestic workers who have escaped abusive employers.
The State Department found 13 nations do not meet minimum standards on fighting trafficking and are not making significant efforts to do so.
The countries in this lowest "Tier 3" category were Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Iran, Kuwait, Mauritania, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Lebanon was in the "Tier 2" Watch List category.
For the first time, the U.S. was included in the Department's Trafficking in Persons report and was given high marks. The report said that while trafficking is a problem there, the U.S. is complying with all minimum standards. It placed the U.S. along with 27 other mainly European countries in the top "Tier 1" category for compliance.
"We believe it is important to keep the spotlight on ourselves," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in presenting the report. "Human trafficking is not someone else's problem. Involuntary servitude is not something we can ignore or hope doesn't exist in our own communities."
