On Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 11th, 2024, the event “Human Traf­fick­ing – Pre­ven­ta­tive Strate­gies and Care of Vic­tims” took place, from 10AM to 1PM, in the Trustee­ship Coun­cil Cham­ber at the UN Head­quar­ters in New York.

Links to down­load full text inter­ven­tion in Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Ital­ian, Russ­ian, Span­ish, Sim­pli­fied Chinese:
https://kdrive.infomaniak.com/app/share/111675/2eaf922f-ba7b-4768-b80d-8559f0ec5d14

Kevin Hyland high­lights cru­cial lack of resources to com­bat traf­fick­ing. The G20 coun­tries should devote at least 30 bil­lion dol­lars to the fight against human traf­fick­ing, instead of 1 bil­lion today! That may seem like a big ask, but the Unit­ed States spends some­where in the region of 100 bil­lion a year on the fight against drugs. This is still a small ask.

The con­fer­ence was orga­nized by the Per­ma­nent Observ­er Mis­sion of the Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta to the Unit­ed Nations in New York in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Glob­al Strate­gic Oper­a­tives, and co-spon­sored by the Per­ma­nent Mis­sions of France, Mex­i­co, Liecht­en­stein, Mex­i­co, Nige­ria, the Philip­pines as well as FAST Ini­tia­tive (Finance Against Slav­ery and Trafficking).

Kevin Hyland is Found­ing Mem­ber and Glob­al Strat­e­gy Direc­tor of San­ta Mar­ta Group which is an alliance of police chiefs and bish­ops from around the world work­ing togeth­er with civ­il soci­ety to erad­i­cate human traf­fick­ing and mod­ern day slav­ery. 30 years expe­ri­ence of police inves­ti­ga­tion. From 2010, Head for the estab­lish­ment of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Human Traf­fick­ing response in UK and from 2014 to May 2018, first Inde­pen­dent Anti-Slav­ery Com­mis­sion­er for the UK gov­ern­ment, from 2018, Ireland’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Coun­cil of Europe Inde­pen­dent Group of Experts for Traf­fick­ing (Gre­ta).

 

TRANSCRIPTS OF THE UN NEW YORK HEADQUARTERS SIDE-EVENT 

JANUARY 11, 2024

HUMAN TRAFFICKING PREVENTATIVE STRATEGIES AND CARE OF VICTIMS

 

Transcript of Kevin Hyland’s presentation

 

OPENING REMARKS:

H.E. Dr. Paul Beres­ford-Hill, Per­ma­nent Observ­er of the Mis­sion Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta to the UN, New York

Speak­ers:

1. E. Dr. Michel Veuthey, Ambas­sador to Mon­i­tor and Com­bat Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons, Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta, Gene­va, Switzerland
2. Deb­o­rah O’Hara-Rusckowski, DM Spe­cial Advi­sor on Human Traf­fick­ing for the Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta to the UN, NY; Founder & Pres­i­dent, Glob­al Strate­gic Oper­a­tives, The O’Connell House
3. Kevin Hyland, OBE, San­ta Mar­ta Group, Lon­don, Found­ing Mem­ber and Glob­al Strat­e­gy Direc­tor of San­ta Mar­ta Group which is an alliance of police chiefs and bish­ops from around the world work­ing togeth­er with civ­il soci­ety to erad­i­cate human traf­fick­ing and mod­ern day slav­ery. 30 years expe­ri­ence of police inves­ti­ga­tion. From 2010, Head for the estab­lish­ment of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Human Traf­fick­ing response in UK and from 2014 to May 2018, first Inde­pen­dent Anti-Slav­ery Com­mis­sion­er for the UK gov­ern­ment, from 2018, Ireland’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Coun­cil of Europe Inde­pen­dent Group of Experts for Traf­fick­ing (Gre­ta)
4. E. Mr. Anto­nio Manuel Revil­la Lag­dameo, Ambas­sador Extra­or­di­nary and Plenipo­ten­tiary and Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Repub­lic of the Philip­pines to the Unit­ed NationsH.E. Anna Ekst­edt, Ambas­sador for com­bat­ing Traf­fikc­ing in Per­sons, Sweden
5. E. Mrs. Diar­ra Dime-Labille, Min­is­ter Coun­sel­lor, Per­ma­nent Mis­sion of France
6. Mauri­cio Reza Bautista, Attaché & Human Rights Expert, Per­ma­nent Mis­sion of Mexico
7. Hilary L. Chester, Ph.D., for­mer­ly with the US Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops (USCCB)
8. Alice Eck­stein, Project Direc­tor, Finance Against Slav­ery and Traf­fick­ing (FAST)

 

 

 

KEVIN HYLAND: Your excel­len­cies, dis­tin­guished guests,  it’s a plea­sure to be here in New York and here at the Unit­ed Nations,  albeit we’re talk­ing about a sub­ject  that should be into the his­to­ry books by now.  I would like to par­tic­u­lar­ly thank Ambas­sador Beres­ford  of the Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta,  and Mex­i­co for con­ven­ing this very impor­tant and time­ly event.  Our col­lec­tive glob­al efforts to end human traf­fick­ing  and forced labour in all its forms,  owes much of its devel­op­ment to the inter­na­tion­al instru­ments  of the Unit­ed Nations  and the efforts of diplo­mats here in New York and in Gene­va.  The many UN agen­cies that work to end human traf­fick­ing  and the issues include look­ing at devel­op­ment, rule of law,  envi­ron­ment, equal­i­ty and equi­ty, child devel­op­ment and democ­ra­cy.  Of course,  there needs to be a spe­cial recog­ni­tion of those who work on the front line,  iden­ti­fy­ing, sup­port­ing and recon­struct­ing the dam­aged lives  of vic­tims of those crimes all over the world,  many of whom are reli­gious sis­ters, many of whom are women  who are putting them­selves at risk to pro­tect oth­ers.  But next year, 2025 will mark a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry  since the intro­duc­tion of the UN Paler­mo Pro­to­col  to sup­press human traf­fick­ing.  The record on inter­ven­tions at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el  go right back to 1930  and the UN Fore­run­ner, the League of Nations,  when it com­mit­ted to address crimes and human rights vio­la­tions  that fall under the human traf­fick­ing umbrel­la.  Of course, since those days  and since 2000, with the UN Paler­mo Pro­to­col  over 170 coun­tries have out­lawed human traf­fick­ing,  and mul­ti­lat­er­al estab­lish­ments such as the EU, the Coun­cil of Europe  and oth­ers have intro­duced bind­ing con­ven­tions or pro­to­cols.  Fur­ther­more, oth­er mul­ti­lat­er­al bod­ies such as the OSE, the ICMPD,  the African Union, Europol, Inter­pol  and the Asso­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Nations and oth­ers  have com­mit­ted to erad­i­cate human traf­fick­ing.  Of course, all UN mem­ber states  have agreed to the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals in 2015,  launched in this very build­ing by Pope Fran­cis.  With­in those goals is a tar­get to end human traf­fick­ing as a pri­or­i­ty.  How­ev­er, as we reach this 25–year anniver­sary  and we reach ten years into the 15 years  dura­tion of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals,  we have to ask our­selves,  have we made progress over the last quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry com­men­su­rate  to the seri­ous­ness of the issue and the risks it cre­ates for chil­dren,  women and men and entire com­mu­ni­ties and nation­al secu­ri­ty?  Since that same time 2000,  tech­nol­o­gy has advanced beyond our imag­i­na­tion.  Our fear of the col­lapse of IT sys­tems  as the new mil­len­ni­um began were unfound­ed.  Look at now how AI and IT have moved in that same time frame.  Also glob­al trade and the move­ment of peo­ple, med­ical sci­ence,  finan­cial flows, air trav­el and many oth­er phe­nom­e­na have increased  beyond our imag­i­na­tions and very often beyond our expectations.

Yet, by com­par­i­son,  approach­es to human traf­fick­ing have remained stag­nant.  The absence of prop­er intel­li­gence gath­er­ing by coun­tries,  mon­i­tor­ing of cash flows, use of data and iden­ti­fy­ing choke points  where human traf­fick­ing can be pre­vent­ed  are con­trib­u­tors to the posi­tion,  as high­light­ed by the US State Depart­ment in 2022,  where it revealed only 5600 con­vic­tions of traf­fick­ing world­wide.  Eval­u­at­ing this data against the ILO–endorsed  esti­mates of there being 50 mil­lion peo­ple across the world in exploita­tion,  this means that there is a 99.98% chance of impuni­ty, almost the per­fect crime.  With only 115,000 vic­tims iden­ti­fied glob­al­ly in 2022,  this sup­ports the UNOD­C’s asser­tion  that less than 1% of vic­tims are iden­ti­fied each year.

What could be done to change the vac­u­um of effec­tive mea­sures  to dri­ve the sup­pres­sion and pre­ven­tion of human traf­fick­ing  and place respons­es sys­tem­i­cal­ly into the heart of coun­try strate­gic plans  and oper­a­tional imple­men­ta­tion?  Of course, we’ve heard excel­lent exam­ples of that from Deb O’Hara.  But to guide this aim,  the San­ta Mar­ta group has intro­duced  and is pro­mot­ing a six–point strate­gic plan.  These six points start with gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment and busi­ness­es.  Gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment should not have any traf­fick­ing in it what­so­ev­er.  That is tax­pay­ers mon­ey.  No gov­ern­ment has been autho­rised to give mon­ey to crim­i­nals.  There are mea­sures they can imple­ment to actu­al­ly make sure  that gov­ern­ment mon­ey does not end up in the hands of traf­fick­ers.  Busi­ness­es. Busi­ness­es around the world ben­e­fit from human traf­fick­ing.  This may be because they turn a blind eye, but it will always be when it hap­pens,  because they haven’t got effec­tive mea­sures.  We need to turn that so that busi­ness­es are held respon­si­ble  for what hap­pens in their sup­ply chain.  We have the lux­u­ry of being priv­i­leged peo­ple,  and if we buy an item and it’s defec­tive, we can get a refund.  If my plane was late com­ing to the Unit­ed States  from a Euro­pean coun­try, I get com­pen­sa­tion of €600.  If you’re a traf­fic vic­tim, and you’re iden­ti­fied,  you’re not enti­tled to either of those, and noth­ing like it.  But also, there are coun­tries that have start­ed  to look at gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment and sup­ply chains.  The UK, Aus­tralia, France, Ger­many, Cana­da and the EU.  Of course, Ger­many is the first coun­try to add a sanc­tion  to those who breach the rules  and have human traf­fick­ing in their busi­ness.  The sec­ond point San­ta Mar­ta wants to see intro­duced  is this notion of taint­ed mon­ey,  remov­ing the ben­e­fits,  which are cur­rent­ly esti­mat­ed at over $150 bil­lion every year.  Taint­ed mon­ey is more than crim­i­nal assets and crim­i­nal ben­e­fit.  It’s the prof­it that is made by traf­fick­ing,  the prof­it of the things that are sold in super­mar­kets,  the things that are sold across the world in gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment,  the use of flats for broth­els,  all of these things where there’s prof­its being made by some­one in that chain  should be up for grabs,  and that mon­ey should then be used as repa­ra­tion,  vic­tim sup­port, and in the fight against human traf­fick­ing.  Peo­ple say, this is real­ly dif­fi­cult.  We already do it for coun­tert­er­ror­ism, so we can do it for human traf­fick­ing.  Tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms must be reg­u­lat­ed and gov­erned by law.  An exam­ple is the Euro­pean data pro­tec­tion laws  bring sanc­tions if you breach the data pro­tec­tion,  even if nobody’s put at risk.  For exam­ple, in Ire­land, under the GDPR rules,  a major plat­form was fined €1.4 bil­lion for breach­ing data rules.  Ire­land has just intro­duced new leg­is­la­tion and a com­mis­sion­er  who will actu­al­ly mon­i­tor these plat­forms to make sure there are no things on there,  like chil­dren being abused, like crime being sup­port­ed,  and thank­ful­ly, that will include human traf­fick­ing.  We need to see that world­wide, not just one small Euro­pean coun­try.  Also, inter­na­tion­al instru­ments,  as we heard from Ambas­sador Vufi,  need to be bet­ter under­stood and imple­ment­ed.  The many instru­ments that are there  that have been agreed by coun­tries but are not being imple­ment­ed.  As our fourth pri­or­i­ty, San­ta Mar­ta want to see them put into place.  Also we want to see inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions, the UN, the EU,  the Coun­cil of Europe, the World Bank, OECD, ILO, the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion  all start to play their role at a strate­gic lev­el,  talk­ing about pre­ven­tion.  We can do it, as we saw dur­ing the recent Covid cri­sis.  The 6th one, and this is very much some­thing that the Car­di­nal  who is the pres­i­dent of San­ta Mar­ta, Car­di­nal Vin­cent Nichols,  always says, we can­not achieve the oth­er five unless we acknowl­edge this one.

We have to show prop­er moral lead­er­ship  as indi­vid­u­als, but also as decision–makers,  because none of this will be deliv­ered with­out lead­er­ship  that becomes trans­par­ent and thinks about peo­ple at the heart of what they’re doing.  We’ve come up with a plan as San­ta Mar­ta,  but how are we going to ask for this to be deliv­ered?  We are work­ing very close­ly with the G20  and par­take in what’s called the G20 Inter­faith alliance,  which feeds into the lead­ers recommendations.

What we want to see is by 2030,  at the time when the SDGs come to their end,  col­lec­tive­ly, the G20 coun­tries are spend­ing  on infra­struc­ture 30 bil­lion each year in the fight against human traf­fick­ing  to achieve sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goal 8.7 and oth­ers.  That may seem like a big ask, but the Unit­ed States spends  some­where in the region of 100 bil­lion a year on the fight against drugs.  This is still a small ask.  When I speak to peo­ple at dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments  and peo­ple at senior posi­tions, includ­ing politi­cians,  they accept that 30 bil­lion glob­al­ly being spent on this by G20 coun­tries,  the rich­est coun­tries in the world, which includes the EU  and now the African Union, is the min­i­mum that should be spent.

Cur­rent­ly, it’s hard to get to a col­lec­tive 1 bil­lion  being spent by gov­ern­ments.  Why must we do this?  Well, the 50 mil­lion peo­ple,  and of course, it hap­pens in our devel­oped nations as well as the glob­al south.  But peo­ple like the girl I met in Sici­ly from Eritrea, 15 years of age.  When she arrived into Italy, she was seen as a migrant,  anoth­er per­son, land­ing in Europe, look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty.  Until you hear her sto­ry  that she’d been repeat­ed­ly raped whilst in Libya  and been sold at mar­kets and was kept in what’s called con­nect­ing hous­es.  It was only when she had worked off her val­ue and there was a seat on a boat  that she was then dis­card­ed by the crim­i­nals.  That’s one of the 50 mil­lion.  We can talk about those all the time,  but we need to make sure that we have a sys­temic approach,  that by the time we hit the end of the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goals,  that we can say it’s start­ing to be effec­tive  and we can stand in front of that girl  who comes from Eritrea and say, we real­ly did our part.  That then we get to the point  where we don’t see these girls com­ing from Eritrea, because we sup­port them  and we take the account­abil­i­ty to those who are allow­ing and encour­ag­ing  and ben­e­fit­ing from this phe­nom­e­non of human traf­fick­ing and mod­ern slav­ery.  San­ta Mar­ta Group is com­mit­ted to doing this.  We’re very lucky to be able to work with the order of Mal­ta  and many oth­er organ­i­sa­tions across the world and coun­tries.  From the car­di­nal and from the patron of San­ta Mar­ta, Pope Fran­cis,  this is some­thing that we are deter­mined to dri­ve home.  We hope that we can per­haps stand here in 2030  and say, yes, we’re mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.  Thank you very much.

QUESTION 1 — PM OF HOLY SEE: Hel­lo, my name is Max, and I’m with the Holy See Mis­sion.  Excel­lent, Max.  First of all, thank you very much for organ­is­ing this fan­tas­tic event  on a very crit­i­cal issue today.  I also want­ed to con­grat­u­late Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta on the open­ing  of the O’Con­nell House, which is a very excit­ing news  and also the suc­cess of the GSO Human Traf­fick­ing  and Pro­to­col Pol­i­cy.  Thank you.  My ques­tion regards to impuni­ty, espe­cial­ly we heard today 99.98% impuni­ty.  That’s quite con­cern­ing num­ber,  and it was also men­tioned by Ms. Bola, del­e­gate from Nige­ria,  also a good friend of mine,  that gaps in enforce­ment mea­sures play a role on this sta­tis­tic.  I was won­der­ing, I was inter­est­ed,  I’m not sure who would best answer this ques­tion,  but about your thoughts on fight­ing impuni­ty and how mem­ber states  and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can bet­ter address this issue in this regard.  Thank you.

KEVIN HYLAND: Yes.  The issue with the low rates of con­vic­tion and the low rates of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion  are fun­da­men­tal to this par­tic­u­lar issue  in the fact that this is where there is enor­mous fail­ing.  I think that when you look at the whole agen­da very much,  it’s designed to respond after the event.  There’s not enough in pre­ven­tion and in many areas of crim­i­nal jus­tice.  The pre­ven­tion, the leg­is­la­tion allows for inter­ven­tion at very ear­ly stages  of when a crime is hatched.  For exam­ple, when it involves drugs, con­spir­a­cies,  when it involves ter­ror­ism,  when it involves gun crime and all those things.  But that takes a cer­tain way of approach­ing those crimes  by the agen­cies like nation­al secu­ri­ty, law enforce­ment,  and the way that that is coor­di­nat­ed with the pub­lic  and the pub­lic’s per­cep­tion of what that is.  We don’t want every­body walk­ing around ter­ri­fied that there’s going to be anoth­er  ter­ror­ist attack, but we want them to know what to do if they see some­thing  that they think may be con­nect­ed to some­thing that’s terrorist–related  or any oth­er crime.  Many of the things that would nor­mal­ly sit under the juris­dic­tion  of statu­to­ry agen­cies and law enforce­ment  and many of the inter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols that should enact gov­ern­ments  and gov­ern­ment agen­cies to do cer­tain things  have in many ways been out­sourced,  and they nev­er get into the sys­tem.  As I said in my pre­sen­ta­tion, 25 years on,  we’re talk­ing about very low num­bers of statu­to­ry agen­cies hav­ing train­ing.  We’ve got very poor poli­cies.  Even in coun­tries like the Unit­ed King­dom,  that’s got a very good piece of leg­is­la­tion around human traf­fick­ing.  Most law enforce­ment agen­cies, health ser­vices, local author­i­ties  don’t have poli­cies that look at crime pre­ven­tion,  crime respons­es and the care of vic­tims.  A proof of that is the fact that last year in the Unit­ed King­dom  there was almost 17,000 vic­tims, poten­tial vic­tims iden­ti­fied.  It’s tak­ing on aver­age two years  for some­body to be for­mal­ly recog­nised because it’s out­sourced  to the home office, as opposed to where every oth­er crime would sit,  which would be in polic­ing, work­ing with NGOs to pro­vide the care.  I think we need to look at the pol­i­cy approach and then start to accept  actu­al­ly, things that we say may not help the agen­da.  I’ve been to Nige­ria a num­ber of occa­sions and worked on inves­ti­ga­tions  in Nige­ria with NAPTIP of vic­tims who have end­ed up in the UK.  When I went to Nige­ria, what I found was this per­cep­tion  that vic­tims would nev­er talk to the author­i­ties.  It was not true in every case.  It was how they were spo­ken to and who was engaged in it.  Build­ing the trust, as we did with reli­gious sis­ters,  and then the vic­tims felt hap­py and safe to either give us infor­ma­tion  or intel­li­gence, or actu­al­ly as it was,  to come back to the UK and give evi­dence in court.  I think we need to real­ly look at these poli­cies  and work out that if we are always say­ing,  “Well, vic­tims will nev­er engage with the state,”  then that’s what will hap­pen.  They won’t engage with the state.  We maybe have per­cep­tions that we need to revis­it,  par­tic­u­lar­ly when we see the progress that is being made on leg­is­la­tion  like we heard from Mex­i­co and the finan­cial.  That’s the oth­er thing, the way that you would approach  anoth­er crime, you would look at all the oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties.  Where are the oppor­tu­ni­ties to get evi­dence that aren’t reliant on a vic­tim?  I think that it’s that pol­i­cy approach and when we get to that point  where we are look­ing at it, at the most seri­ous lev­el,  we will see an increase in pros­e­cu­tions, con­vic­tions  and con­fi­dence on the entire issue.

QUESTION 2 — PM of MOROCCO: I’m Hanaa Bouch­ikh,  Coun­sel­lor at the Per­ma­nent Mis­sion of the King­dom of Moroc­co.  First of all, I’d like to pass the greet­ings  of Ambas­sador Hilale, who attend­ed the first hour  and heard many esteemed pan­el­lists.  But unfor­tu­nate­ly, he had to leave us to attend anoth­er engage­ment  and to chair meet­ing.  At the out­set, I would like, of course, to wel­come the con­ven­ing  of this time­ly meet­ing and to com­mend all the pan­el­lists and keynote speak­ers  for their intend­ed patience and for their insight­ful brief­ing.  Would like to seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty to express our appre­ci­a­tion, of course,  to Ambas­sador Burs­feld, and all esteemed pan­el­lists for,  of course, pre­sent­ing remarks on the reach of human traf­fick­ing  to mul­ti­ple areas, most­ly labour, work­force, migra­tion,  and the list goes on.  Giv­en time con­straint, I will not elab­o­rate on Moroc­co’s  ongo­ing efforts on com­bat­ing all types of human traf­fick­ing nation­wide.  But I will seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty to present two ques­tions, if you allow me.  First one, what are the rec­om­men­da­tions you could have to bet­ter under­stand  the link between migra­tion and traf­fick­ing in per­sons to devel­op  more effec­tive respons­es and to elim­i­nate the risk  of traf­fick­ing in the migra­tion process, espe­cial­ly to pro­tect migrant work­ers  from all forms of vio­lence and dis­crim­i­na­tion?  The sec­ond ques­tion, as we all recall,  at the high lev­el meet­ing of the Gen­er­al Assem­bly in 2021,  we adopt­ed a polit­i­cal dec­la­ra­tion on traf­fick­ing,  on com­bat­ing human traf­fick­ing.  In that polit­i­cal dec­la­ra­tion, mem­ber state com­mit­ted to tak­ing imme­di­ate  and effec­tive mea­sure to erad­i­cate forced labour  and to secure the pro­hi­bi­tion and elim­i­na­tion of forms of child labour,  includ­ing the recruit­ment and use of child sol­diers,  and by the 2025 to end child labour in all its forms.  My ques­tion is,  is this objec­tive still achiev­able by 2025?  What are the needs to be done to counter the exploita­tion exer­cise  by armed groups to force chil­dren to act as com­bat­ant?  –Thank you. –Thank you.

KEVIN HYLAND: Well, I think the polit­i­cal dec­la­ra­tion  which reit­er­ates the SDG 8.7 and the ambi­tion, and I think by 2025,  are we going to achieve what was antic­i­pat­ed in 2015?  Prob­a­bly not, because the progress has­n’t been at the stage that it should be.  We know that child labour is still an enor­mous prob­lem,  and the use of chil­dren and peo­ple for forced labour is defined  in mil­i­tary sit­u­a­tions, is a seri­ous prob­lem.  But I think when we look at things that can hap­pen and are devel­op­ing,  like involve­ment of the pri­vate sec­tor and involve­ment of gov­ern­ments  and the com­mit­ments that we’re see­ing,  the African Union becom­ing part of the G20 is an enor­mous step for­ward.  I think that’s what we need to place our hope with and to inform those bod­ies.  Do we have the chance of reach­ing 2030 when traf­fick­ing is no longer here?  We cer­tain­ly can get to the point where the mod­el is bro­ken  and that every­body sees it as some­thing that has to be pre­vent­ed.  Of course, crim­i­nals will be crim­i­nals because traf­fick­ing is a crime.  It’s a delib­er­ate act.  I think that we can achieve by 2030 the break­ing down of this mod­el.  Then as we lead into the next iter­a­tion of glob­al goals that will obvi­ous­ly  be launched in 2031, we need to be far more com­mit­ted  and have the plan in place so that the fol­low­ing ten or 15 years  does actu­al­ly see the eradication.

QUESTION 3: I would like to thank the Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta.  Ques­tions on mon­i­tor­ing and inter­dic­tion,  I think we’ll all agree  map­ping, and met­rics, and shared intel­li­gence are key.  Is an over­all pic­ture emerg­ing of traf­fick­ing ori­gins, routes,  and modes of trans­porta­tion?  If so, can this clar­i­ty con­tin­ue as traf­fick­ing morphs  and changes over the years?

KEVIN HYLAND: Yes, there is a glob­al slav­ery index pro­duced by a char­i­ty in Aus­tralia, and it’s accept­ed by the UN.  It does show those trends.  One of the things it shows as well in it,  the most recent is the rela­tion­ship to trade and busi­ness.  It shows where the oppor­tu­ni­ties of inter­ven­tion are.  But we need to move to that point of the inter­ven­tion.  That should be where we’re look­ing at pol­i­cy.  I just want­ed to talk about the issue  that was men­tioned ear­li­er about migra­tion.  Of course, Ambas­sador Veuthey is absolute­ly right.  It is a tool of the traf­fick­ers, and it’s a won­der­ful thing  when they have the whole place that’s dis­or­gan­ised  and they can go in and get their fruits.  But I was very lucky recent­ly to go to Brazil last year  and see the work of the Stel­la Maris, of the Scal­abri­nis,  and to see how they were deal­ing with it,  hav­ing this incred­i­ble cen­tre,  The heart of one of the things that was so impor­tant  was to give peo­ple sta­tus to stay there  and to give them jobs.  Through the Scal­abri­nis or the Stel­la Maris,  they had a whole net­work of oppor­tu­ni­ties for work for peo­ple.  Once peo­ple felt val­ued and were giv­ing some­thing back to com­mu­ni­ty  but doing some­thing for them­selves,  all of this sus­pi­cion around these migrants,  like we might be in Europe, dis­ap­peared.  I just saw what was prob­a­bly one of the best mod­els I’ve ever seen  for deal­ing with vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who arrive look­ing for pro­tec­tion.  Cer­tain­ly from the work of Stel­la Maris, they were get­ting it.

QUESTION 4:  sor­ry, my name is Hunter Sev­eri­ni and I live in New York City.  I appre­ci­ate your giv­ing me a chance to par­tic­i­pate in this dis­cus­sion,  and I hope atten­dance con­tin­ues to grow in these meet­ings.  I think it’s a very impor­tant top­ic.  It’s nice to see peo­ple tak­ing the time from their day to be here.  My ques­tion is basi­cal­ly how we can be bet­ter advo­cates  to local, state, nation­al, and inter­na­tion­al gov­ern­ments  to com­pel them to address traf­fick­ing prob­lems  that they have already acknowl­edged.  I’ll give some spe­cif­ic exam­ples  just to be a lit­tle clear about what I’m talk­ing about.  The rea­son I’m bring­ing it up  is because I think so much traf­fick­ing is not vis­i­ble. The fact that we appar­ent­ly can’t even suc­ceed in a lot of cas­es  in address­ing some of the most bla­tant exam­ples,  makes me real­ly ques­tion a lot of the cur­rent approach­es  that are being made towards traf­fick­ing,  and the fact that it makes me think that we could be doing a lot bet­ter.  The first exam­ple I’ll give is here in New York City.  I’m not sure exact­ly for how long,  but I know for quite some time, Roo­sevelt Avenue in Coro­na, Queens,  has become a sex tourism, pros­ti­tu­tion, and pre­sum­ably sex traf­fick­ing hotbed.  It’s gone viral on the Inter­net.  There are now tour videos you can watch which explain the neigh­bour­hood to peo­ple,  what the prices are like, how to approach girls there.  Eric Adams has acknowl­edged this.  He men­tioned a bit ago that he took a dri­ve to this neigh­bour­hood,  and that he’s a for­mer sub­way cop, and the guy has been around a bit.  He’s acknowl­edged that there is def­i­nite­ly  a big pros­ti­tu­tion prob­lem there.  Yet, in spite of this, I can pret­ty much promise,  even though I haven’t seen it myself maybe for a cou­ple of months,  it’s not an area I’m around a lot,  but I can pret­ty much promise that this is oper­at­ing right now.  It’s a basi­cal­ly 24/7 mar­ket.  Peo­ple that are inter­est­ed can def­i­nite­ly find a lot of infor­ma­tion about this  in the media and on YouTube.  It just dis­heart­ens me a bit, because I feel like if we have these…  So much traf­fick­ing is not vis­i­ble.  Yet when we have these exam­ples that are so obvi­ous and so acknowl­edged,  I don’t know how much more atten­tion it nec­es­sar­i­ly is going to take  to get some­thing done about this.  But I believe that there real­ly does need to be a lit­tle bit more atten­tion on this.  I’ll give anoth­er exam­ple, which is a lit­tle more inter­na­tion­al.  I think it’s a nice con­trast­ing exam­ple because it’s also a big prob­lem,  but it’s also much fur­ther away from us.  In Ger­many right now, you have this big expan­sion  of what’s called these mega broth­els.  A lot of them offer things like unlim­it­ed ser­vice  that seem par­tic­u­lar­ly moral­ly out­ra­geous to me.  I think that the gov­ern­ment has done a lot,  whether active­ly or pas­sive­ly, to encour­age sex tourism.  I think that Ger­many has sig­nif­i­cant­ly over­tak­en the Nether­lands now.  I think it’s becom­ing one of the world sex tourism des­ti­na­tions,  prob­a­bly because of that sex traf­fick­ing.  I can only assume what the arti­cles that I’ve read are telling me,  that basi­cal­ly Ger­many is get­ting com­plete­ly flood­ed  with more sex work­ers than peo­ple even know what to do with,  and the gov­ern­ment seems to be just encour­ag­ing this more and more.  I guess with these two exam­ples in mind,  I’d just be curi­ous to know what we can do  to call this out a lit­tle more.  Because it’s not like this is going on in secret,  but they’re putting an argu­ment out in pub­lic which jus­ti­fies this,  when in real­i­ty, I see a huge poten­tial for harm  as part of all the things that I’ve men­tioned.  I would just be curi­ous to hear from some of the pan­el­lists,  if they have any ideas par­tic­u­lar­ly to these kinds of sit­u­a­tions,  and what we can do to help advo­cate  for the count­less vic­tims that are sure­ly part of all this.

KEVIN HYLAND: Yes.  You hit on a very impor­tant point that we know where this is,  we see it there, we haven’t got to go and look for it that hard,  and it’s there and noth­ing hap­pens.  That demor­alis­es–  All of us.  –the issue, but it also enables anoth­er enabler for the crim­i­nals,  that it’s good busi­ness to be in.  But what we have done at San­ta Mar­ta,  with our com­mu­ni­ty work that we are doing with parish­es and dio­ce­ses,  and not just from the Catholic Church, but from com­mu­ni­ties,  is we’ve changed the approach of what we’re ask­ing peo­ple to do.  What we’ve done is cre­at­ed a train­ing man­u­al  which they can take and use them­selves as well.  But it’s about them ask­ing their com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers—  their elect­ed offi­cials, their mem­bers of par­lia­ment,  their police chiefs, their police and crime com­mis­sion­ers,  who are like may­ors in the UK, and local offi­cials—  “What are you doing?  How are you imple­ment­ing the Mod­ern Slav­ery Act in the UK?  How are you imple­ment­ing the sec­tions that say  there’s got to be sup­port for vic­tims?  What is your pre­ven­tion plan?”  Ask­ing those ques­tions and get­ting seri­ous answers.  When we start­ed doing this, which was only quite recent,  the com­mu­ni­ties felt, actu­al­ly,  we are real­ly get­ting involved in this, and we feel that we’ve got a part to play.  Of course, when we were doing it, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Catholic Church,  the bish­ops and the parish priests said actu­al­ly, this is real­ly good,  because it’s not say­ing that we should bring anoth­er cen­tre,  which could be very expen­sive, lots of risk.  We’re actu­al­ly mak­ing and ask­ing and request­ing  and cre­at­ing the account­abil­i­ty in local com­mu­ni­ties.  We’ve start­ed that,  and we’re push­ing that across the UK this year, and into Ire­land.  We’ve had lots of buy–in from law enforce­ment,  from gov­ern­ment offi­cials and police and crime com­mis­sion­ers.  But to your point around street pros­ti­tu­tion,  when the 2012 Olympics was hap­pen­ing in the UK,  there was this fear that street pros­ti­tu­tion  was going to make Lon­don look nasty.  Some were approach­ing it with,  “We’ll go out and we’ll arrest all the pros­ti­tutes,  the women in pros­ti­tu­tion,”  or we’ll do this, do that, curb crawl­ing oper­a­tions and all that.  But what I did was I got a team togeth­er  which con­sist­ed of reli­gious sis­ters, main­ly from the Mer­cy Sis­ters and oth­ers,  and the Nation­al Health Ser­vice, local author­i­ties,  and we put in a pre­ven­tion plan.  The women that were work­ing were then direct­ed into a cen­tre  where they were giv­en path­ways.  This mod­el is very much copied and pro­mot­ed now  by an organ­i­sa­tion called Arise, which I’m very pleased to be part of now.  The vice–chair is here as well.  They use that mod­el about how you can edu­cate com­mu­ni­ties to, in effect,  take away the inter­est of this or make it some­thing that does­n’t exist.  But also, Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries in par­tic­u­lar,  have intro­duced laws of the buy­er pays, which is about peo­ple who buy sex,  then can be arrest­ed and fined.  In Swe­den, for exam­ple, the penal­ties are quite high.  There’s a num­ber of ways of sup­press­ing.  The one thing you can nev­er do and must nev­er do  is to tar­get the women who are work­ing in pros­ti­tu­tion.  They need to be dealt with as vic­tims and peo­ple that need path­ways.  Does­n’t mean they’re always going to be easy to work with,  but we need to give them oppor­tu­ni­ties.  In Ger­many, I’m real­ly pleased to say there is a bit of a shift  in the gov­ern­ment there, and they’re start­ing to look at the  believe it or not, the Scan­di­na­vian mod­els.  There is a real push from cer­tain mem­bers of par­lia­ment,  cer­tain min­is­ters, and they do realise now  that what they’ve got of this com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion  of these mega broth­els has real­ly desta­bilised cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties  and attract­ed oth­er forms of crime,  which is exact­ly what’s hap­pened in Ams­ter­dam as well,  that this kind of mod­el.  Also, we’re always push­ing, quite right­ly, equal­i­ty, wom­en’s rights.  Does that mean we want to see women on sale in high streets?  Is that what we want our young boys and men to actu­al­ly view women as?  Of course it can’t be.  I think there are mod­els that are around the world  that could be incor­po­rat­ed,  could be learned from and then actu­al­ly imple­ment­ed into pol­i­cy,  deliv­er­able pol­i­cy that’s actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing on the ground,  and there are ways to do that.  But unfor­tu­nate­ly, at the moment,  they’re not hap­pen­ing on any scale whatsoever.

KEVIN HYLAND: It was some­thing that was high­light­ed  when we were doing the work around the Olympics,  around cre­at­ing a wall of shame.  There was this sug­ges­tion that names were going to be put  on the sides of bus­es and things like that.  Of course, in our juris­dic­tions, in our democ­ra­cies, jus­tice is in pub­lic.  What goes on in the courts can be report­ed  unless there’s par­tic­u­lar rea­sons of risks to chil­dren or indi­vid­u­als,  but the cir­cum­stances can still be report­ed.  I was the one who actu­al­ly stopped them doing the names on the bus­es  and the wall of shame.  My rea­son­ing was,  that may be a father who’s out with a woman  who’s pro­vid­ing sex­u­al ser­vices and pay­ing for it, which,  there is a jus­tice solu­tion to that.  But that father could also have a 12–year–old daugh­ter at school,  a 9–year–old son, and they go into school the next day  and they become the vic­tim of their par­ents.  What we did was we amend­ed the leg­is­la­tion  so that par­tic­u­lar­ly if it was done from a car,  if some­body goes out in their car  to pick up women who are pro­vid­ing sex­u­al ser­vices,  we got the pow­er to take the car away that became involved in crim­i­nal­i­ty.  Then the guy might have gone home and tried to keep it from his wife  or his part­ner or his fam­i­ly,  keep the charge sheets hid­den away and hope and hold their breath.  But actu­al­ly, to go home and not have your car real­ly hurt them.  That could be a brand–new car.  I mean, I know on one occa­sion it was a very expen­sive car  that was tak­en to the val­ue of £100,000.  I think there’s oth­er ways of doing it. Name and shame, I get it.  Any­thing that hap­pens in the courts gen­er­al­ly can be pub­lic.  But I think about the big­ger dam­age it could do to young girls and young boys  and peo­ple who are com­plete­ly inno­cent in any way, shape, or form.  It also shows that we’re being a lit­tle bit venge­ful  as opposed to fol­low­ing a rule of law.