The US State Department condemned Berlin’s handing of the domestic issue and said Germany’s justice system was not doing enough to deter people from dabbling in trafficking and exploitation. In its annual report on human trafficking around the globe, the Americans said perpetrators in Germany, especially those involved in forced prostitution, rarely end up behind bars. According to German daily national newspaper Die Welt, which has seen an advance copy of the document, the US has downgraded Germany in the categories of countries fighting trafficking.
The report said: “The federal government does not fully meet the minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking.”
The department said the number of convictions for human trafficking has been falling since 2009.
In addition, convicted offenders rarely get arrested, particularly those in the field of forced prostitution, which accounts for the vast majority of known cases of human trafficking in the country.
The report stated: “Only 36 percent of offenders convicted of trafficking for sexual exploitation were serving a term of imprisonment in 2017.
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“This failed to meet the minimum requirement, which generally provides for the imprisonment of convicted traffickers.”
US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, said instead of making improvement on its approach to how people are exploited, Germany’s appears to be losing its grip on the situation.
He told Die Welt: “Regrettably, the problem in Germany is getting bigger and bigger instead of being curbed.”
The latest statistics from the German federal authorities revealed that a high proportion of convicted traffickers are either on probation or did not receive any prison sentence at all and the number of convictions has been declining in recent years.
Joseph Giordono-Scholz, spokesman for the US Embassy in Berlin, said: “The federal government has taken no significant steps in comparison to the previous year to remedy the shortcomings.”
But Germany was not the only nation to have its status slashed when it comes to its response to such crimes.
The US also downgraded Italy, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Azerbaijan in their efforts to combat trafficking.
Meanwhile, the US ranked itself in the highest category, for countries which deal with human traffickers heavy-handedly.
Germany’s ministry of justice pointed to Council of Europe report, also recently published, which said Berlin scores significantly higher than its US counterparts when tacking trafficking.