Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is the second poorest country in the Caribbean after Haiti. Forty-two percent of its population of 9.6 million live below the poverty line (UNDP 2004) and 16 percent live in extreme poverty.

The country’s major agricultural exports are sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cocoa. Around 40,000 small-scale cocoa growers produce between 32,000 and 48,000 tonnes of cocoa a year, mainly for export, with a value of $33m to $67m. The income of small-scale cocoa producers is unstable and unpredictable as it is tied to the volatile price of cocoa on the New York and London stock markets: in 2000, the New York price fell to a 27-year low of $714 a tonne; it recovered to a 28-year high of $3,275 in summer 2008, then plummeted below $2,000 in the autumn as a result of the global financial crisis

[Extracted from U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009]

The Dominican Republic is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Dominican women are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Panama, Slovenia, Suriname, Switzerland, Turkey, and Venezuela. A significant number of women, boys, and girls are trafficked within the country for forced prostitution and domestic servitude. In some cases, parents push children into prostitution to help support the family. Child sex tourism is a problem, particularly in coastal resort areas, with child sex tourists arriving year-round from various countries, particularly Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United States and reportedly numbering in the thousands . Haitian nationals, including children, who voluntarily migrate illegally to the Dominican Republic may subsequently be subjected to forced labor in the service, construction, and agriculture sectors.