Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are a double-edged sword when it comes to human trafficking and forced labour, United Nations agencies experts said.
While technologies are often used by traffickers and unscrupulous employers to recruit workers, International Organisation for Migration regional director Andrew Bruce argued that ICTs also help authorities to locate and disrupt the supply chains.
Mr Bruce spoke last week during the launch of the 6Degree portal in Bangkok. 6Degree is a crowdfunding platform developed jointly by the IOM and Microsoft, using cloud computing technology to help with financial support for human trafficking survivors. Internet users can directly donate money for the victims through the portal.
The IOM is now able to identify and assist 6,000-7,000 victims of trafficking annually, from a range of 600,000 to four million victims worldwide.
Mr Bruce said about half the trafficking cases take place in the Asia-Pacific region.
The International Labour Organisation estimates that more than 20.9 million people live in various situations of forced labour globally.
While the new platform may ease the IOM’s work to a certain extent, Mr Bruce believed that technologies must be used preventively, in an attempt to stop people from being victimised.
“We’ve got to try and reduce the number of victims, not just wait at the end for these victims to come out from the [trafficking] process. That’s where the emphasis should go,” he said.
The IOM regional director added that while the technologies have been out there for a while and were exploited by traffickers, international agencies and law enforcement authorities have only begun to catch up with them.
Data collecting and sharing are essential to fighting trafficking and exploitation, according to ILO Senior Programme Officer Max Tunon.
Authorities need to be informed to know where to inspect and what to look for, he said.
“There’s limited resources for labour inspection. You need data, you desperately need data,” he said, adding that it would enable the allocation of resources to target specific geographic locations.
A good example is the use of the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), which Mr Tunon says has been used more in Thailand since the beginning of the year. Originally intended to help fight illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing practices, VMS tracking has allowed for easier labour inspections as well.
With better registration of vessels and data monitoring, authorities will be able to match workers or missing workers with specific boats, leading to targeted inspections instead of random ones, he explained.
Mr Tunon added that a similar practice of mapping primary seafood processing units has been carried out since 2013, due to the many irregularities in the sector.
“By mapping unregistered [shrimp] peeling sheds, we are able to tie them to specific buyers and apply pressure there,” he said.
He argued that the combined use of inspections and sanctions would be an effective deterrent and called for greater law enforcement in Thailand.
He said data usage would also allow authorities to demonstrate that they are properly addressing the problem.
It would help them convince domestic and international bodies that progress is being made.
“That’s one way governments can reduce the scrutiny on them,” he added.
Such efforts are under way in Thailand, Mr Tunon said. The ILO is working closely with the Department of Labour Protection on inspections, including monitoring mechanisms.
“We’re seeing that violations are being identified. It’s a very good start and we need to build on that,” he said, noting the political will is there.
However, there are cases in which technologies as simple as mobile phones may also prove useful, the ILO expert pointed out.
He said that ICTs are powerful, especially in sectors such as fisheries or domestic work, where workers are particularly vulnerable to abuse due to the isolated nature of their working conditions.
A mobile phone can be their connection to the outside world or a channel to contact authorities or family members.
A large number of hotlines have been set up, Mr Tunon said, adding that
workers have been able to call to report violations.
He said there have also been concrete examples of networks of domestic workers forming and spreading information among themselves.
“[However], we still have questions about the extent to which the target groups have access to apps and websites,” he said.
Mr Tunon said labour officers wanted to make sure these were developed to be user-friendly and responsive to workers’ needs, because many domestic workers lack tech savvy.
“The last thing we need is to push workers into using applications which they’re not familiar with,” argued Anna Olsen, a technical officer with the ILO.