Big data and the fight against human trafficking
The recentSan Antonio, Texas, tragedyserved as a vivid reminder that human trafficking is an international crisis that spans from poor nations to the doorsteps of some of the most developed nations in the world.
While this United States-based event captured global news, the ongoing human trafficking crisis in India often goes underreported. A recent U.S. Consulate General in the country partnered with local nongovernmental organizations, creating campaigns that addressed local, mostly poor, communities to provide them with the tools to empower themselves to stand up against the crime.
Forced labour constitutes India’s largest trafficking problem: men, women, and children in debt bondage who are forced to work in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, firecracker, and cloth embroidery factories, as well as in poorly regulated cottage-industry segments. In addition, thousands of unregulated work placement agencies are believed to recruit adults and children under false promises of employment for sex trafficking or forced labour, including domestic servitude. India also has human and natural disasters that displace and affect large segments of the population, which further adds to this problem. Statistics from India’s National Crime Records Bureau indicate a steady rise in trafficking-related crimes.In addition to local trafficking, welfare agencies estimate that around 12,000-50,000 women and children are trafficked into India every year from Nepal and Bangladesh.
Technology is usually leveraged and exploited by criminal perpetrators to perform illegal activities. The use of social media, websites, and anonymous apps and networks allow traffickers to contact and recruit vulnerable, and often very young, victims and also promote these services easily and anonymously with buyers via social media or through apps. The use of technology also reduces the cost of recruitment and is also safer than physical recruitment — an approach more prevalent with poor communities who do not have access to the internet.
The battle is not all lost, however. In an interconnected world, technology knows no sides and can also be leveraged in favour of the good. Trafficking generates huge data archives, including predatory networks, transportation and money trails that can be followed and acted upon.
Data and analytics provide unprecedented opportunities for law enforcement and service providers to monitor illicit activity and enables them to locate and rescue victims. An increasing number of human rights organizations and technology companies are coming together to explore various ways to collaborate and identify new ways to leverage big data and data analytics in the fight against human trafficking.
A group of three anti-trafficking organizations — The Polaris Project in the U.S., LaStrada International in Eastern Europe, and Liberty Asia — aided by a grant from Google, launchedThe Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network, which uses innovative big data technology — data warehousing and data analytics — to turn the tide in the fight against modern-day slavery.Software and serviceslike Microsoft’sPhotoDNAand the Child Exploitation Tracking System , are being used to grow citizen awareness, prevent trafficking recruitment, and expose existing trafficking.
The good news is that the government of India, cognizant of this problem, is working hard to address this problem — and is even contemplating a comprehensive law on human trafficking.
