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More international cooperation needed to beat trafficking, says Europol chief (27 November 2014)

Date: 27/11/2014
Duncan Lewis, Immigration Solicitors, More international cooperation needed to beat trafficking, says Europol chief

The director of the European policing agency, Rob Wainwright, has warned that people traffickers are using social media sites to groom young women into believing they are being offered jobs in childcare or cleaning in the UK and other EU member states, before being trafficked into the sex industry.

The Daily Mail reports that the head of Europol was addressing think tank the Centre for Social Justice in London when he revealed that the use of webcams online has boosted the number of young women being trafficked as sex slaves.

Mr Wainwright said technology had resulted in the traffickers’ activities becoming “industrialised” to enable them to target and monitor more victims online.

“Facebook is effectively being used in many cases as the means to attract and then enslave vulnerable young women,” Mr Wainwright said.
“They are using the modern technological tools to more efficiently monitor an increasing number of victims.”
Once sex workers are trafficked by gangs, their movements are then controlled using social media and webcams, with workers monitored to make sure they turn up at brothels or for other criminal activities.

Mr Wainwright is calling for more international cooperation to combat vulnerable women and other workers being trafficked into the sex industry and as modern-day slaves.

He said that people traffickers’ use of social media like Facebook was increasing – with trafficking regarded as a “low-risk, high profit” activity by criminal gangs, which generates an estimated £100 billion annually for organised crime syndicates.

Mr Wainwright said that using a webcam to monitor sex workers meant that pimps did not have to visit their workers every day to monitor their movements and make sure they attended appointments

“In the past, the pimps and traffickers had to do that by physically visiting them,” said Mr Wainwright.

“Now they can just do it at the click of a button – and therefore control 50 victims much more easily and readily in virtual form.

“What that allows, therefore, is a sort of industrialisation of the problem – single traffickers and pimps can control many more victims.”

Globally, around 36 million people are estimated to be held as modern slaves, with up to 500,000 people in the EU working as slaves. In EU member states, most trafficked slave workers come from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary – and the UK, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands are the most popular destinations for people traffickers.

Mr Wainwright is calling for a “culture of change” across international borders to tackle the issue of people trafficking and modern slavery.

“As things currently stand, organised crime groups are going about the business of modern slavery – and with little fear of being caught and pursued.

“We urgently need to do much better – the international law enforcement community needs to trust each other a bit more.

There is no point in sitting on a vital piece of information in one country if it can break a syndicate spread across five or more others.

“The culture of policing must change,” he added.

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