1. Introduction
This Orange Day, 25 July, the UNiTE campaign will focus on trafficking in the lead up to the World Day against Trafficking in Persons observed on 30 July. Trafficking is a serious violation of human rights and a form of violence against women and girls (VAWG). The theme of this year’s World Day Against Trafficking in Persons is the “Use and abuse of technology” and focuses on the role of technology as a tool that can both enable and combat human trafficking.
2. Trafficking of Women and Girls
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by human trafficking. The UNODC Global Report on Trafficking In Persons 2020 highlighted that for every 10 victims detected globally, 5 are women and 2 are girls and that women and girls made up 92% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation as the most common form of exploitation among detected victims.
Vulnerabilities to trafficking
 Understanding the root causes and risk factors of trafficking is crucial to preventing and eliminating it. The intersection of gender inequality and other factors such as race, migration status and crises, increases the vulnerability of women and girls to trafficking. As highlighted in a report by the human rights group Walk Free, countries with a greater gender gap across health, education, and economic status have higher prevalence of modern slavery. Women’s economic insecurity resulting from unequal access to education, the lack of safe and viable employment opportunities, limited access to gender-responsive social protection and gendered poverty are well established factors contributing to women and girls’ vulnerability to trafficking. Traffickers target victims who are marginalized or in difficult circumstances.
 Previous experiences of different forms of VAWG also contribute to women and girls’ vulnerability to trafficking. UNODC found that in at least 25% of cases, trafficking survivors were subject to multiple forms of violence before being trafficked including child sexual abuse, intimate partner violence and/or child marriage. The most recent data on detected trafficking victims also found that the intimate partner was the trafficker in 13% of cases. The broader culture of male entitlement and control, and social norms related to the control of women’s sexuality and acceptance and justification of violence against women, is a key underlying driver of women’s vulnerability to trafficking.
Contextual factors such as migration policies and labour laws can also contribute to vulnerability to trafficking. Migrants make up a significant proportion of victims of trafficking. As highlighted by the Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons (ICAT), there are gender-specific vulnerabilities and risks faced by women throughout their migration trajectory, which makes them more susceptible to trafficking. Women continue to be concentrated in low-skilled and low paid jobs in the informal sectors with little or no legal protection.
Crises and COVID-19
 The global context of crises that is wreaking havoc in the world including climate change, conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic are further exacerbating women and girls’ vulnerability to trafficking including increased economic insecurity, displacement, breakdown of essential services, justice systems and social support structures and an intensification of violence against women. Since the start of COVID-19 new vulnerabilities have collided with pre-existing and deep-seated gender inequalities to exacerbate the risk of trafficking for women and girls. A report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and UN Women demonstrated how COVID-19 has shifted trafficking in persons (TIP) further underground and reduced the capacity of authorities to detect and respond to it while providing new opportunities for traffickers to deceive, coerce and exploit women and girls.
Use and Abuse of Technology
As women and girls’ lives shifted online for work, education, and social activities since the start of COVID-19, traffickers found new ways to target people both to generate demand and to deceive and groom women and girls/children. Traffickers are increasingly using technology to recruit, control and exploit women and girls for instance through deceptive job advertisements linked to trafficking through social media channels or through dating applications. The internet also offers traffickers a platform for generating demand through the possibility of reaching out to a wider audience with advertisements of victims and facilitates communication amongst perpetrators. The internet, especially the dark web, provides traffickers with anonymity and is used to hide information about their activities and identities. The use of electronic currencies offers tools for hiding personal information allowing for anonymous payments without disclosing purpose, all of which facilitates trafficking.
As UNODC has highlighted, internet tools have been integrated into the business models of traffickers at every stage of the process. Based on case summaries reviewed by UNODC the two types of strategies utilized by traffickers are ‘hunting’ whereby a trafficker actively pursues a victim, typically on social media and ‘fishing’ strategies that involve posting a deceptive job offer, often for high-paying jobs and waiting for potential victims to respond.
In the United States Analysis of data from the National Trafficking hotline indicated that in 2020, online recruitment increased by 22% and the internet was the top recruitment location during lockdown. Most notably, there was a 120% increase in the proportion of potential victims for whom social media platforms were used for recruitment into trafficking. A Europol report highlighted that COVID-19 led to a surge in online distribution of child sexual abuse material which was already very high prior to the pandemic and there is growing evidence of live streaming connected to child sexual abuse and the sexual exploitation of adult women. However, measuring the prevalence of technology-facilitated human trafficking and identifying victims remains incredibly challenging but growing evidence suggests that it is important to note that while technology is being used as a tool to facilitate trafficking, it can also be leveraged to eradicate human trafficking including by facilitating investigations to shed light on the modus operandi of trafficking networks, enhancing prosecutions through digital evidence, and providing support services to survivors. For example, Tech against Trafficking brings technology companies and experts together to develop tech tools that help to identify and track perpetrators and consumers accountable as well as increasing awareness of safe use of technology and working to change social norms.
3. Advocacy on ending trafficking of women and girls
This month the UNiTE campaign will focus its advocacy efforts on the elimination of trafficking of women and girls in observance of the World Day Against Trafficking. Ending trafficking of women and girls requires the recognition that it is a form of VAWG. States should ensure that national anti-trafficking laws and policies criminalize human trafficking and that they are aligned to the provisions of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons. This includes ensuring effective identification of victims of all forms of exploitation, survivor-centered protection and assistance to victims including access to justice, as well as accountability for traffickers. CEDAW General Recommendation No. 38, on trafficking in women and girls in the context of global migration provides practical guidance to states on implementing anti-trafficking interventions that are both gender responsive and prioritize the intersecting vulnerabilities and needs of women and girls. Furthermore, it affirms that states have a duty, both individually and collectively to prevent women and girls from exposure to the risk of being trafficked. This includes addressing the drivers and the factors that create vulnerability to trafficking in the first place and addressing the demand that fosters sexual exploitation and other forms of exploitation, challenging harmful social norms and masculinities that normalize male sexual entitlement.
Finally, given the growing use of technology, states should strengthen efforts to detect and intercept activities associated with online trafficking. This requires increased cooperation between law enforcement, civil society women’s rights organizations, technology companies, social media, and online platform service providers to improve the prevention of trafficking through the creation of safe online spaces and enhance detection and access to protection and support.
Suggested Advocacy Actions
All UNiTE Campaign partners, including UN agencies, civil society, private sector, sports associations, youth groups, universities, schools etc. are encouraged to:
- Orange their workplace, schools, communities and online spaces to raise awareness about the UNiTE Campaign and its theme for 25th July-25th August, the trafficking of women and girls to mark the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.
- Call for greater investment in policies and strategies to address the drivers and vulnerabilities of women and girls to trafficking and to strengthen prevention through tackling demand and changing social norms that foster trafficking.
- Collaborate with women’s rights organizations, civil society and survivor advocates to establish partnerships and cooperation with the technology sector to strengthen policies and measures to prevent, detect and respond to the trafficking of women and girls in online spaces.
- Convene national or local dialogues to raise awareness on trafficking as a form of VAWG and to explore how technology can be harnessed to prevent, detect, and respond to online recruitment, identify traffickers and illegal and harmful material online and take immediate and effective steps to remove it.
Suggested Social media messages
- Women’s economic inequality increases their vulnerability to #trafficking. To #EndHumanTrafficking, we need to tackle gendered poverty and eliminate all forms of #GenderBasedViolence. Read the UNiTE campaign’s Action Circular this #OrangeDay and take action!
- To prevent trafficking, we need to address the demand that fosters sexual exploitation and change harmful social norms. Read the UNiTE campaign’s Action Circular this #OrangeDay and take action!
- To #EndHumanTrafficking, law enforcement and criminal justice systems need to leverage technology in their responses, enhance prosecutions through digital evidence and provide support to survivors. Read the UNiTE campaign’s Action Circular this #OrangeDay and take action!
- #Trafficking is a form of violence against women. To #EndHumanTrafficking national trafficking action plans and prevention strategies should tackle the root causes including gender inequalities. Read the UNiTE campaign’s Action Circular this #OrangeDay and take action!
4. Main principles of UNiTE campaign advocacy
- Honour and acknowledge women’s movements and their leadership in the 16 Days of Activism and in preventing and ending violence against women and girls in general.
- ‘Leave No One Behind’: Apply a human rights-based approach and focus attention on the most underserved and disadvantaged groups of women and girls experiencing intersecting forms of harm in efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls.
- Survivor-centered: Take a respectful and ‘do no harm’ approach to the telling and/or retelling of survivor stories, only with their informed consent and under conditions in which they feel empowered to exercise their agency. This and the empowerment principles are vital for the engagement of survivor advocates/activists on their own terms. All UNiTE partners must ensure that survivor advocates’ rights, safety, dignity and confidentiality are prioritized and upheld. For more information, please refer to Ensuring survivor-centered and empowering approaches.
- Multi-sectoral: Everyone in society has an important role to play in ending violence against women and girls and we all must work together across sectors to address the various aspects of violence against women and girls.
- Transformative: Fostering critical examination of gender roles, regimes and practices, while seeking to create or strengthen equitable gender norms and dynamics for fundamental, lasting changes for women and girls.
- Elevate the voices of young feminists: While the world has been reviewing progress made over the past 25 years since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, it is time to create platforms to elevate voices of the next generation of feminists who are shaping their future now.
5. Key programmes and initiatives by the UN to prevent and respond to trafficking
UNODC works to strengthen legal frameworks to combat transnational organized crime, trafficking being a key area of intervention. The Transforming Alerts into Criminal Justice Responses to Combat Trafficking in Persons within migration flows (TRACK4TIP) Initiative aims to provide law enforcement and prosecuting authorities with reliable information on the modus operandi of criminal networks, including those operating online. The Blue Heart campaign is a global awareness raising initiative to prevent human trafficking and includes internet safety tips to protect against human trafficking online.
The Safe and Fair Programme: Realizing women migrant worker’s rights and opportunities in the ASEAN region is part of the Spotlight Initiative to eliminate VAWG and is being implemented by ILO and UN Women, in collaboration with UNODC. The programme aims to address migrant workers’ vulnerabilities to violence and trafficking, strengthen rights-based and gender-responsive approaches to VAWG and labour migration governance and support access to services. The programme developed 16 essentials for quality multi-sectoral service provision to women migrant workers subject to violence, including trafficking victims and conducted a study on the use of mobile phone technology by migrant women and need for digital literacy for women’s safe migration.
The Global Protection Cluster (GPC) Anti-Trafficking Task Team, co-led by Heartland Alliance International, UNHCR and IOM, developed the Introductory Guide to Anti-Trafficking Action in Internal Displacement Contexts, 2020 and is being disseminated to guide counter-trafficking prevention and protection response. The guide underscores that online platforms are an important space for awareness generation due to technology-facilitated trafficking and illustrates how online trafficking for sexual exploitation takes place in displacement contexts.
Recognizing that robust legislation is a key part of comprehensive response to online child sexual abuse and exploitation and that many countries have yet to put in place wide-ranging legislation to counter this form of trafficking, the UNICEF report Legislating for the digital age provides guidance to country offices and partners on how to strengthen legislative frameworks to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse in accordance with international and regional conventions, general comments and guidelines of treaty bodies, models laws and good practices.
The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund), through its grantee, the NGO Raksha, in Nepal is implementing a project to support women survivors of trafficking working in the informal entertainment sector in Kathmandu. The project assisted over 4,000 women employed in Kathmandu’s informal entertainment sector to obtain decent working conditions and social protection through the actions of Raksha and its partners.
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