I think this is six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Qatar definitely has human rights and human trafficking issues, but they do seem to be making steps in the right direction. However, they don't always seem prepared to admit how bad the problems are, which is one reason why they always reject these reports from the US.

The other reason they reject the reports is because it seems the US really don't do their research and tend to just cut and paste from the previous years report, without paying any attention to the improvements Qatar has made.