Serious perils for America’s anti-trafficking efforts TIP report release reveals
The most important takeaway from last week’s publication of the 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report isn’t what’s inside the document, but the circumstances of its release. The future of the report itself is in peril, as is the office that produces it.
2025 TIP report release
The TIP Report is the world’s premiere reference resource on forced labor and sex trafficking, evaluating anti-trafficking efforts by more than 150 governments and providing concrete recommendations for improvement. For decades, the State Department has gathered diplomats from foreign countries, survivors of human trafficking, members of Congress, religious leaders, journalists and civil society experts from around the world to annual TIP Report launch events. The convenings, typically headlined by the Secretary of State, are more than routine Washington protocol. They underscore the importance of the report’s findings to drive improvements in anti-trafficking efforts worldwide, to demonstrate the US government’s commitment to combat trafficking and lead the way among nations, and to coalesce whole-of-society partnerships necessary for success.
This year, however, after missing the statutory deadline to release the report by three months, the department quietly put it online with no launch event and little public notice a day before the government shut down. The report did not elevate the issue’s importance to US diplomacy by providing a formal introduction by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has championed anti-trafficking efforts for years while in Congress.[1] The annual TIP Heroes Program, which spotlights frontline global leaders, many of them survivors, was missing from the report. A section on the impact of trafficking on the LGBTQ+ community was dropped. The report did not mention in its analysis of the United States that there have been significant reductions in anti-trafficking programs at key federal agencies.[2] This context for the report’s release has undermined US leadership in the global fight to combat trafficking and tarnished the TIP Report’s reputation and credibility.