Tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List — Brunei does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so, therefore Brunei was upgraded to Tier 2 Watch List; key achievements included referring two alleged traffickers for prosecution, including one Bruneian national, identifying and providing assistance to 14 victims, opening two shelters for victims, and signing a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding with Bangladesh on recruitment of migrant workers; however, the government did not effectively screen for trafficking among foreign nationals in commercial sex and migrant workers; officials handled some potential trafficking cases administratively, if at all, and probably inappropriately detained, prosecuted, and deported potentially unidentified sex and labor trafficking victims; for the sixth consecutive year, the government did not convict any traffickers under its anti-trafficking law, and other laws that could be used to prosecute traffickers did not provide sufficiently stringent sentences (2023)
Trafficking profile: human traffickers exploit foreign victims in Brunei; some men and women who migrate to Brunei to work in domestic service, retail, or construction work are subject to involuntary servitude, debt-based coercion, contract switching, non-payment of wages, passport confiscation, physical abuse, or confinement; some female migrants entering Brunei on tourist visas are forced into prostitution, and some Kenyan women reportedly faced forced labor in Brunei; workers from Bangladesh and China may have been forced to work in Brunei at Chinese-run projects; some traffickers use Brunei as a transit point for victims used for sex and labor trafficking in Malaysia and Indonesia; Anti-LGBTQI+ laws place some LGBTQI+ individuals at higher risk; trafficking experts in Brunei have received threats from traffickers (2023)
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