| Disputes - international | Hong Kong plans to reduce its 2,800-hectare Frontier Closed Area (FCA) to 400 hectares by 2015; the FCA was established in 1951 as a buffer zone between Hong Kong and mainland China to prevent illegal migration from and the smuggling of goods |
| Illicit drugs | despite strenuous law enforcement efforts, faces difficult challenges in controlling transit of heroin and methamphetamine to regional and world markets; modern banking system provides conduit for money laundering; rising indigenous use of synthetic drugs, especially among young people |
| Trafficking in persons | current situation: human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Hong Kong, and traffickers also exploit victims from Hong Kong abroad; traffickers exploit women from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia in sex trafficking; some women in Hong Kong – often with the assistance of their families – deceive Indian and Pakistani men into arranged marriages involving forced domestic service, bonded labor in construction and other physically demanding industries, and other forms of abuse via exploitative contracts; drug trafficking syndicates coerced South American women to carry drugs into Hong Kong; employment agencies hired foreign domestic workers under false pretenses and forced them into commercial sex, sometimes through debt-based coercion tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List — Hong Kong does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so; Hong Kong is hiring and training 98 new employees within the immigration, customs, labor, and justice departments dedicated to trafficking issues; authorities screened more than 7,000 vulnerable individuals for trafficking; the labor department introduced a victim identification mechanism to its division offices; the government provided anti-trafficking training to various officials; the government did not investigate, prosecute, or convict any cases of labor trafficking, investigated fewer sex trafficking cases, and did not provide victims any government-funded services; the government continued to penalize victims for unlawful acts traffickers compelled them to commit; no legislation was enacted to fully criminalize all forms of trafficking (2020) |
Source: CIA World Factbook
This page was last updated on September 18, 2021
