Madagascar Issues - 2024

Disputes - international

Madagascar-France: claims Bassas da India, Europa Island, Glorioso Islands, and Juan de Nova Island (all administered by France; talks with France over the claims have occurred in 1990, 2016, and 2019); the vegetated drying cays of Banc du Geyser, which were claimed by Madagascar in 1976, also fall within the EEZ claim of France

Madagascar-Comoros: the vegetated drying cays of Banc du Geyser, which were claimed by Madagascar in 1976, also fall within the EEZ claim of the Comoros

Trafficking in persons

tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List — Madagascar does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so; officials identified and provided services to more victims, launched an updated National Action Plan, took steps to reduce the demand for child sex tourism, and worked with an international organization to monitor Malagasy migrant workers’ conditions in Jordan; however, the government did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts, compared with the previous year, to expand its anti-trafficking capacity; officials investigated fewer trafficking cases and did not report any prosecutions or convictions of suspected traffickers for the second consecutive year; the government did not hold complicit officials accountable nor investigate reports of officials facilitating child sex trafficking within Madagascar or labor trafficking of Malagasy workers abroad; for the third consecutive year, the government did not disburse funds to the National Office to Combat Human Trafficking, hindering nationwide progress and coordination; efforts to address internal crimes, including domestic servitude, forced begging, and child sex trafficking, remained inadequate, and officials continued to conflate human trafficking with other crimes including gender-based violence and sexual exploitation; therefore, Madagascar remained on Tier 2 Watch List for the second consecutive year (2023)

trafficking profile: human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Madagascar, as well as victims from Madagascar abroad; traffickers exploit Malagasy children in child sex trafficking and forced labor in domestic service in homes and businesses, mining, street vending, agriculture, textile factories, and fishing; most child sex trafficking occurs in tourist destinations, urban cities, vanilla-growing regions, and around mining sites with the involvement and encouragement of family members; tourist operators, hotels, taxi drivers, massage parlor owners, and local adults involved in commercial sex also facilitate child sex trafficking; girls and boys as young as 12 are exploited in child sex tourism in coastal areas and major cities, often openly in bars, nightclubs, massage parlors, hotels, and private homes; Malagasy men exploit the majority of child sex trafficking victims, while most foreign sex tourists are French and Italian nationals, or to a lesser extent from other Western European countries and Comoros; government officials are reportedly complicit in providing false documents to facilitate illicit recruitment of Malagasy women to work in Gulf states; many Malagasy women are employed as domestic workers in China, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, where they are at risk of trafficking; traffickers acting as labor recruiters send Malagasy women to China with false identity cards, where they are exploited in forced labor in agriculture or domestic servitude; Malagasy men may be exploited in forced labor in the services and construction industries in the Middle East and domestic servitude in China; Chinese nationals working at China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects in Madagascar were vulnerable to forced labor (2023)

Illicit drugs

illicit producer of cannabis (cultivated and wild varieties) used mostly for domestic consumption; transshipment point for Southwest Asian heroin