1.- The first thing I’d like to share with you is what I heard from the first vic­tim of traf­fick­ing, on this dai­ly route lead­ing to the cen­tral Mediter­ranean Sea that I met… It was silence! And that silence meant more than any spo­ken word. That silence com­mu­ni­cat­ed the chal­lenges of estab­lish­ing a mean­ing­ful, respect­ful, and effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a vic­tim of traf­fick­ing. The young man from Mali had been lit­er­al­ly enslaved for almost two years by his traf­fick­ers. He was shack­led almost most of the time. And sub­ject to var­i­ous forms of tor­tures and depri­va­tion. His silence com­mu­ni­cat­ed his fear… But it also remind­ed me that trust can­not be assumed. It takes time, needs to be built. And it works dif­fer­ent­ly with dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Based on their cul­ture, age, gen­der, expe­ri­ence, trau­ma. It took him maybe 15 min­utes to move his eyes from his shoes to meet mine. His look expressed fear as he was full at arm’s length of his tor­tur­er. The first meet­ing was almost entire­ly non­ver­bal. On the while I let, the shared silence between us, on the cup of tea cre­ate a zone of com­fort, my mind focused on the refer­rals to be made. Yet between what was on the glossy paper of the nation­al refer­ral mech­a­nism for vic­tims of traf­fick­ing, on what ser­vices actu­al­ly were avail­able, there was a huge gap! Vic­tim response with­out pro­tec­tion means noth­ing… On whether the per­son was a refugee or migrant, did not real­ly have any rel­e­vance at this point. The per­son need­ed phys­i­cal, legal, social pro­tec­tion. The first thing I looked for was shel­ter in the nation­al refer­ral mech­a­nism and book. The first one did not exist in real­i­ty. The next one was school. The third one was too far on men trav­el­ing with risk of being undoc­u­ment­ed. And I looked for coun­sel­ing. The spe­cial­ized coun­sel­ing for this per­son was not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able, on the local NGO run­ning, it had no inter­preters for the lan­guage the per­son spoke. Third, med­ical care. Access to med­ical care was impos­si­ble due  to the lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion on gap in the nation­al leg­is­la­tion. And I could go on, go on, and go on… And that’s the expe­ri­ence I have in many of those African coun­tries on these routes lead­ing to the cen­tral Mediter­ranean Sea.

2.- The sec­ond obser­va­tion I’d like to share. Is my frus­tra­tion at the grow­ing gap between the renewed polit­i­cal calls sug­gest­ing that more is being done against human traf­fick­ers …—and the real­i­ty I know, at least on the route where I work. It might be dif­fer­ent in the con­text of the Ukraine sit­u­a­tion. The UNODC annu­al report breaks its load of depress­ing sta­tis­tics: one of them always strikes me, is about the decreas­ing pros­e­cu­tion on con­vic­tion rates for human traf­fick­ers. How often have we heard we need to defeat the busi­ness mod­el of the human traf­fick­ers, but are we mak­ing progress? Do we con­sid­er this crime as seri­ous­ly as we con­sid­er drug traf­fick­ing or arms traf­fick­ing? Do we fol­low mon­ey flows? Do we effec­tive­ly use exist­ing sanc­tion regime? Do we capac­i­tate ade­quate­ly judi­cial author­i­ties in this area? Do we rec­og­nize vic­tim of traf­fick­ing as right hold­ers and as poten­tial key assets for effec­tive pros­e­cu­tion? I leave you the answer. My con­cern also relates to the grow­ing gap between capac­i­ty build­ing efforts and vic­tims assis­tance in this field: a recent report from the UN sys­tem in March 2023 doc­u­ment­ed that most of the fund­ing relat­ing to human traf­fick­ing go towards data col­lec­tion, research, soft capac­i­ty build­ing activ­i­ties. I’m not say­ing it’s not need­ed, but efforts need to be bet­ter bal­anced with pre­dicts, such efforts need to be bet­ter bal­anced with pre­dictable vic­tims assis­tance. UNHR will pub­lish in Jan­u­ary 2024 a report show­ing that in 16 African coun­tries along the route I cov­ered, ser­vices for vic­tim of traf­fick­ing are not avail­able where they are most need­ed, such as in bor­der areas or in crit­i­cal mixed move­ment hubs where the risks are the most acute. Worse! This report updates the study we pub­lished two years ago, and it reveals that some of the ser­vices for vic­tims have now dis­ap­peared due to the lack of sup­port. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly the case for access to psy­choso­cial coun­sel­ing and access to jus­tice. And because of the lack of alter­na­tive solu­tions and sup­port, a for­eign vic­tim of traf­fick­ing which is not a refugee, is often just quick­ly sent back home, irre­spec­tive of the risk of retraf­fit­ing and with­out any form of access to justice.

3.- Final­ly, the third obser­va­tion I’d like to make is my firm belief that more can be done on the pre­ven­tion, pro­tec­tion, pros­e­cu­tion and part­ner­ship. As an exam­ple, togeth­er with IOM and UNODC, we set up 2 years ago a small pilot project with­out any ded­i­cat­ed resource, known as “fac­tors” to pick up from social media posts, includ­ing those orig­i­nat­ing from traf­fick­ers them­selves, who pub­li­cize their ran­som requests, inci­dents of human traf­fick­ing involv­ing migrants and refugees in Libya, Tchad, Niger and Sudan. We were able to doc­u­ment cas­es involv­ing more than 15,000 vic­tims. Refer­rals led in some instance to their release from traf­fick­ers, under­ground net­works. But not every­one was released, but no one can say today we didn’t know…?  These cas­es are known. Impuni­ty for the traf­fick­ers is no longer a cer­tain­ty. This small project illus­trates that we can do more with lit­tle and we should not give up, feel pow­er­less, con­front­ed to lose many chal­lenges. We can all con­tribute to a bet­ter response. What we need is less words and more focused action.

Thank you.