How America rates countries on their efforts to prevent human trafficking

IN MOST people's minds, slavery was an immoral practice that ended in the 19th century. But the huge amount of sex trafficking and forced labour in the world—estimates suggest there are 27m victims of these practices—has led policymakers to brand this as "modern slavery" and work towards its eradication. For the past 12 years the American government has issued a "Trafficking in Persons Report", which ranks nearly every country on their compliance with America's Trafficking Victims Protection Act (though the only sanction is opprobrium). The data in this year's report reveal anomalies. All of the G7 countries make the top tier for compliance—except Japan, which is in the second tier. Switzerland, one of the world's richest countries, is not ranked with its western European peers in tier one, but with places like Laos and Latvia in tier two. And there are tier one standouts, like Colombia, Nicaragua and Georgia. The countries in the lowest tier, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, probably won't surprise many. The good news is that 29 countries were upgraded from a lower tier to a higher one in this year's report.