Dominican Republic Issues - 2024

Disputes - international

Dominican Republic-Haiti: unauthorized migration and smuggling from impoverished and unstable Haiti has led to occasional border tensions and increased security by the Dominican Republic, including the construction of a fence and the deployment of military troops

Refugees and internally displaced persons

refugees (country of origin): 115,283 (Venezuela) (economic and political crisis; includes Venezuelans who have claimed asylum or have received alternative legal stay) (2021)

stateless persons: 133,770 (2016); note - a September 2013 Constitutional Court ruling revoked the citizenship of those born after 1929 to immigrants without proper documentation, even though the constitution at the time automatically granted citizenship to children born in the Dominican Republic and the 2010 constitution provides that constitutional provisions cannot be applied retroactively; the decision overwhelmingly affected people of Haitian descent whose relatives had come to the Dominican Republic since the 1890s as a cheap source of labor for sugar plantations; a May 2014 law passed by the Dominican Congress regularizes the status of those with birth certificates but will require those without them to prove they were born in the Dominican Republic and to apply for naturalization; the government has issued documents to thousands of individuals who may claim citizenship under this law, but no official estimate has been released

Trafficking in persons

tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List — the Dominican Republic does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so; more traffickers were convicted, two police officers were investigated for trafficking crimes, and cooperation with international law enforcement increased; officials identified more victims and implemented new protections for vulnerable domestic workers; however, the government did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts, compared with the previous reporting period, to expand its anti-trafficking capacity; the government systemically and persistently failed to screen vulnerable migrant or undocumented populations, failed to refer victims to services, and did not provide these groups with justice in trafficking crimes; officials investigated and prosecuted fewer traffickers, did not adequately investigate labor trafficking cases involving migrants and children, and did not identify victims; the government did not adopt draft amendments to improve anti-trafficking laws, did not adequately fund or provide resources to anti-trafficking efforts, and did not complete a new National Action Plan; therefore, the Dominican Republic was downgraded to Tier 2 Watch List (2023)

trafficking profile: human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in the Dominican Republic, and victims from the Dominican Republic are exploited abroad; Dominican women and children, particularly from impoverished areas, were victims of sex trafficking throughout the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Europe, the Middle East, and the US; a 2022 study found family networks, social media recruiting, domestic servitude, inequality, gender-based violence, lack of information and education, and corruption were the primary causes of trafficking of Dominican women and girls in Costa Rica, Spain, and Switzerland; foreign victims, especially from Colombia, Haiti, Venezuela, other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America, and Asia, were trafficked in the Dominican Republic; the Dominican Republic is a destination for sex tourists – primarily from North America and Europe – for child sex trafficking; traffickers increased recruiting of Colombian and Venezuelan women to dance in strip clubs and later coerce them into sex trafficking; children are forced into domestic service, street vending, begging, agricultural work, construction, robbery gangs, and movement of illicit narcotics; traffickers reportedly operate along the Haitian-Dominican border, sometimes with assistance of corrupt government officials who accept bribes to allow undocumented crossings; LGBTQI+ individuals face high levels of violence, which may increase vulnerability to trafficking (2023)

Illicit drugs

major transshipment point for cocaine shipments to the United States and Europe in the Caribbean; some drugs are consumed locally.