Gulf nations top US list of slave trade offenders

In a report that has drawn attention from civil rights organisations and the media across the world, the US state department has put out a report on human trafficking that puts the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran among the worst offenders.

The department's 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report assesses efforts by 184 governments worldwide to fight sexual exploitation, forced labour, and modern-day slavery.

The report, released on Monday, put Estonia and Belarus on its human trafficking watchlist. It also maintained Russia on the list for the eighth consecutive year for the same alleged failures. These countries failed in the last year to step up efforts to fight prostitution and forced labour, it said.

The Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report is the US government's principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on human trafficking. It represents an updated, global look at the nature and scope of trafficking in persons and the broad range of government actions to confront and eliminate it.

Considered one of the most comprehensive analyses of worldwide human trafficking, the report ranks countries in three "tiers", depending on how much effort they are making to control the problem.

In the top tier are those that fully comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. In the second tier are those that do not fully comply but "are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance"; and in the bottom tier are those that "neither satisfy the minimum standards nor demonstrate a significant effort to come into compliance".