The Philippines maintained its Tier 1 status in the United States Department of State’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report, reflecting serious and sustained efforts in eliminating severe forms of human trafficking for the 10 consecutive year.
In an announcement released on Tuesday, September 30, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) said the Philippines fully meets the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking.
“The government continued to demonstrate serious and sustained efforts during the reporting period; therefore, the Philippines remained on Tier 1,” the statement read.
The 2025 report also underscored the Philippines’ efforts to enhance prosecution and law enforcement, resulting in increased rescue operations, investigations, and convictions.
However, the report also contained some alleged lapses by the Philippine government, noting that it did not report any foreign victims.
“The government lacked a reliable mechanism to consolidate statistics on the total number of victims identified and assisted; therefore, the government did not report how many victims it identified and provided data (that) may have included victims identified in previous years,” it said.
“Although the government meets the minimum standards, it did not identify the vast majority of potential trafficking victims among individuals exploited in online scam operations despite widespread reporting indicating these individuals faced conditions indicative of trafficking,” it added.
In light of these findings, the U.S. State Department provided several recommendations:
- Investigating, prosecuting, and convicting more traffickers, including complicit officials, and sentencing the majority of convicted traffickers to significant prison terms;
- Enacting new legislation to regulate fishing recruitment agencies and protect fishers; and
- Taking steps to disrupt industrial-scale human trafficking in online scam operations, including by banning the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) licenses previously used commonly as a guise for these operations.
Only 33 countries out of 188 assessed governments reached the top-tier ranking this year.
