Author: Dr. Ian Kearns, Strategic Advisor, Marinus Analytics
War in Ukraine forces mass evacuation crisis leading to trafficking vulnerabilities.
A Tragedy Unfolds
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th Feb, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 4.2 million people have fled the country. At least another 6.5 million are thought to have been internally displaced. These staggering numbers represent people flows on a scale not seen in Europe for decades. Warnings are now emerging on a regular basis that vulnerable Ukrainian refugees caught up in this tragedy are being targeted by trafficking gangs.
These events have come as a shock to all of us. For me personally, they represent the collision of two worlds. On the one hand, over the last three years and in particular over the last 12 months, I have provided strategic advice and support to Marinus Analytics in its attempt to advance the fight against human trafficking. Prior to that, and alongside it, I have spent 25 years working on national and international security issues, advising Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers and others on security policy challenges while helping private sector companies to think about the landscape of geo-political risk. As a part of this work I co-founded, led and now serve as a Board member of a new think tank, the European Leadership Network, focused precisely on the kinds of European security challenges that have now blown up in our faces.
That inter-state conflict generates massive refugee flows and that refugees in turn are vulnerable to human traffickers is not, therefore, news to me. But the scale of what is happening, my personal knowledge of the complexity of both the international and human security issues at play, and an awareness that governments alone cannot successfully handle this challenge now make me acutely aware of both the moral and practical imperative to ask what more can be done to help.
As a board member of the European Leadership Network, I will be playing an active part in the debate on how European security needs to be rebuilt from here. In the remainder of this piece, for Marinus Analytics, I want to address some aspects of the human trafficking dimension of the crisis and in particular some of the ways in which technology might be able to help.
Children at Risk, Institutions Overwhelmed
It is important first, to understand the current context. State institutions and aid organisations in the countries neighbouring Ukraine are being overwhelmed, despite their best efforts. Individuals and civil society groups have stepped in to try to fill the gap in what is both a moving reaction to unfolding events, and an indicator of the widespread solidarity being felt for Ukraine by people right across Europe.
Regardless of this impressive response however, and make no mistake, it is impressive, the situation is chaotic and is leaving many of the most vulnerable refugees at risk. Some civil society groups have warned that trafficking groups are targeting parentless children, evacuated from orphanages and foster homes in Ukraine at high-speed. Many children are currently unaccounted for. Other NGOs are distributing leaflets to arriving refugees, warning them against accepting offers of transportation and accommodation from strangers.
Long lines of Ukrainian refugees at Slovak border.
Welcome Advocacy for an Improved Response
Public officials and institutions with a remit to help combat trafficking have been vocal in their calls for action to address the crisis. Helga Gayer, the President of the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA), has reminded the 48 State Parties to the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings of their responsibilities, both to prevent human trafficking and to identify and protect victims of it. More specifically, she has called for all relevant authorities to take urgent steps “to strengthen coordination at border crossings and reception facilities and to ensure the accurate registration of refugees and their access to necessary documentation, residence permits and essential services.” In addition, she has argued governments must now act “to prevent fraudulent offers of transportation, accommodation and work, and strengthen safety protocols for unaccompanied children, linking them to national child protection systems.”
Separately, the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings (SR/CTHB) at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Valiant Richey, has also called for preventive measures, including state provision “for housing and immediate needs of people seeking refuge, such as food, sanitation, clothing, access to mobile communication and internet, and short-term financial assistance” and for all of this to be provided “in a gender-sensitive, age-appropriate and trauma-informed manner.” He has also stressed the need to provide clear, centralised and officially marked information and advice to refugees via websites and hotlines, and the need to monitor online platforms for the spread of deceptive information on housing and employment opportunities. The latter might seem attractive to refugees who have left everything behind but are, in reality, trafficking and fraud scams designed to prey on the vulnerable.
All of these measures and recommendations, and others in similar vein, are sensible and should receive widespread support. But much more needs to be done.
Options for Additional Action
There is an urgent need to ramp up efforts to tackle the trafficking gangs already evident before the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place. Many of the pre-existing sex-trafficking networks, for example, were Polish, Hungarian and Romanian in origin, their roots being in precisely those countries bordering Ukraine and now receiving most of the refugees. Renewed efforts to disrupt the activities of these gangs now would help address both the underlying problem and the current danger being posed to Ukrainian refugees.
To help in this effort, the public response also needs to make more creative use of the open-source intelligence (OSINT) data now available. Organisations like Bellingcat are already using such data to play a crucial and potentially transformative role in the cataloguing and preservation of evidence related to war crimes, passing it to the International Criminal Court and others to aid in what will hopefully be future prosecutions.
This kind of OSINT grounded approach has a role to play in addressing the trafficking problem too. Public authorities, private sector organisations, and NGOs could perhaps work together more creatively to use the open-source data held by anti-trafficking organisations to achieve results. One option might be to use such data to add an additional layer to the official vetting process for those volunteering to host refugees in their homes. A recent debate in the UK served to highlight why this might be necessary. The British government launched a Homes for Ukraine initiative, in which citizens are offered £350 a month to host refugees. To speed its implementation, it said it would adopt a ‘light touch’ approach to regulating it. A subsequent letter from 16 refugee and anti-trafficking organisations to the U.K. Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, however, said the scheme risked operating as a ‘Tinder for Sex Traffickers’. To help address this fear, a way could and perhaps should be found to match the data of applicants to host refugees against data collected from open sources on those currently known or suspected of controlling and promoting sexual exploitation on public websites.
Sadly, whatever additional preventive steps like these are taken, we also know that some of the vulnerable Ukrainians fleeing their country will fall into the hands of traffickers anyway. We therefore also need to do everything we can to try to identify when and where that is happening as quickly as possible, so victim identification and safeguarding can take place at speed and so the individuals and organised crime gangs responsible can be identified and disrupted. Again, open-source monitoring of the ‘retail’ market in trafficked individuals could be key here, enabling fast targeting and tracking of people identified as Ukrainian who are appearing in the marketplace for the very first time. While just a few years ago this would not have been possible, today a number of organisations have the tools to do it.
We all know that the epicentre of this tragedy is in Ukraine itself and that the scale of it is becoming clearer and more horrific by the day. I have no illusions about the fact that the kinds of specific measures I have just suggested can help but in a limited way, and only at the periphery. It must also be acknowledged that many of those who have fled to other countries are, thankfully, being welcomed warmly and are finding safety. But we still have to try. We know that for some, the departure from Ukraine will represent an escape from one set of threats to life only to be plunged into a new environment of danger and exploitation. However small and peripheral we might feel our contribution can be, there is a moral obligation on all of us to ask what more we can do, working alongside others and from whatever vantage point we may have, to help protect our fellow human beings from this deeply tragic outcome.
Dr. Ian Kearns is Strategic Adviser to Marinus Analytics, based in the United Kingdom. He is co-founder, former Director and Board Member at the European Leadership Network and a former specialist adviser to the joint House of Commons/House of Lords Committee on National Security Strategy in the United Kingdom.