Information for the 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report

Summary

This report was submitted to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons of the U.S. Department of State by Free Society Project/Cuba Archive and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

This report focuses on the forced/compelled labor of Cuban health workers generating export services for the Cuban state, “internationalists” or “international collaborators,” in Cuban government parlance. Other forms of forced/compelled labor and sex trafficking believed to be occurring in Cuba are not addressed in this report.

The violations addressed in this report meet the criteria of the U.S. Department of State for forced labor, or “labor trafficking,” under the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), that establishes that labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purposes of involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.