United Nations Constructive Dialogues
- EMPOWERMENT COLLECTIVE
- 2 days ago
- 13 min read
This October, Empowerment Collective (virtually) attended two UN Constructive Dialogues within the series of five Constructive Dialogues for the Review Mechanism of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), which took place in person in Vienna, Austria.
The Constructive Dialogues are dialogues between non-governmental stakeholders and State Parties on the five topics of the Working Groups to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC): (i) Firearms, (ii) Technical Assistance, (iii) International Cooperation, (iv) Trafficking in Persons, and (v) Smuggling of Migrants. Empowerment Collective was invited to participate in the two dialogues most relevant to our mission: the constructive dialogues on Trafficking in Persons and on the Smuggling of Migrants.
The Constructive Dialogues consisted of (i) a briefing on the developments and outcomes of the review process, (ii) an update on the meeting of the relevant working group, (iii) a panel discussion following the topics of the working group, and (iv) the collection of inputs and suggestions from participants on the role of civil society on the implementation of UNTOC and its protocol.
The official dialogue summary and results will be published by the UN and shared with member states during the working group next year. Until then, here are our notes and observations on the key points highlighted by UNODC and the constructive dialogues' civil society participants.
Constructive Dialogue on Trafficking in Persons
On Wednesday, October 8th, an Empowerment Collective representative virtually attended the UN Constructive Dialogue on Trafficking in Persons. The focus for the 2025 constructive dialogue was evidential issues related to trafficking in persons cases, especially regarding online scams. Here is a brief summary of some of the key points that participating UNODC staff and civil society contributors brought to the table:
Overview of the review mechanism for the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC): 189 states have been reviewed, but only 9 of these have explicitly involved civil society in conducting the review process.
Not all states have completed reports, but so far 23 states have reported encountering difficulties in implementing the provisions of the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) protocol, and 28 states have reported the need for technical assistance to effectively implement the TIP protocol
With the rise of technology, traffickers are increasingly recruiting victims through online advertisements. Traffickers mainly advertise seemingly legitimate jobs, then force people who take the bait to engage in carrying out these online scams themselves through debt bondage and various abusive practices.
IT training centers often serve as grooming spaces, preparing people to be trafficked into committing cyber crimes like online scams
Key UNODC representatives emphasized the need for a holistic approach to addressing trafficking - trafficking doesn't happen in a vacuum and we must look not only at trafficking but also the other key issues it is interconnected with
Anna Alvazzi del Frate, Founding Director of Kennis: Knowledge for Safety and Good Governance and member of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime Network, talked about how in her experience the UNTOC review mechanism is practically not there, and how she'd hoped to see progress in the past two years but it's much slower than she thought it would be
One representative from an Africa-based NGO shared that when you ask young Africans what they want to do with their lives, the most common response is "make money." Because of this culture, driven by global exploitation and disinvestment of entire regions, this NGO now sees that it is mostly youth committing these crimes.
Another representative from Nigeria similarly spoke to the ways that poverty and deprivation drive young people into "get rich schemes" like online scams, but many of them become trapped in rooms and forced to work nonstop, beaten and flogged if they stop working. He spoke about the people who enter the cyber-scam field voluntarily but then want to leave and cannot, and how this breaks down the idea of a "perfect victim" that so much of our legal and emotional support systems rely on
Though many organizations focused only on survivor-centered approaches or the importance of listening to survivor voices, a heartening amount of voices spoke openly and directly to the importance of survivor leadership, and of actively empowering survivors to rise into leadership within anti-trafficking organizations.
The panel discussion portion of the constructive dialogue featured five panelists: Everfree Uganda - Willow International, Project Suma - Fundación La Palabra Hecha Vida, International Justice Mission, Victim Support Europe, Frente Gremialista por la Transparencia del Colegio de Abogados de Honduras, and Azadi Community.
International Justice Mission and Azadi Community's expert representatives were both survivor leaders, Abdus Salam and Magdaline Kaleli respectively
All five of the presenters, prompted by the question asked to them by the moderator, discussed legal approaches to ending trafficking and touched on similar points regarding the importance of providing holistic, trauma-informed, survivor-centered support for survivors before, throughout, and after legal proceedings to prosecute their trafficker.
According to the organizations presenting, this support looks like therapy and psychosocial support (helping women understand and process what happened to them, and providing safe housing and security), privacy/confidentiality throughout the process, legal empowerment (orientation for survivors on their rights and the justice system processes), capacity building for actors in the justice system (training law enforcement in trauma-informed practices), Aftercare (re-integration and economic empowerment support beyond the courtroom)
Some presenters also dove into the problem of trafficking and online scams, describing how online scams are usually in the form of fraudulent scholarships or work abroad opportunities, and how investigations are often inadequate because these recruitment methods are not properly examined, or because people ignore whole criminal networks behind the scams, placing too much focus on individual cases.
Some panelists as well as other civil society attendees during the interventions portion of the dialogue emphasized the incredibly important point that survivors are often treated as criminals—especially if they were forced to carry out crimes like online scams—or illegal migrants, leading to survivors facing more harm while traffickers are not actively pursued and neither are corrupt officials/immigration officers who were complicit in the trafficking
Nearly all panelists expressed a similar sentiment that supporting survivors is important because it makes them feel safe and comfortable enough to testify in court, which is key to the successful conviction of a trafficker. Some orgs addressed the troubling and exploitative nature of this statement.
International Justice Mission spoke about the importance of working towards a legal system that ensures survivor testimony does not carry the burden of the case to prevent survivor re-traumatization.
Victim Support Europe assured listeners that the holistic support they provide to survivors is not at all contingent on whether or not they decide to testify, so as not to pressure survivors into sharing things or stepping into spaces where they don't feel comfortable.
Azadi Community spoke to the importance of working with survivors to figure out what justice means to them and helping them achieve that version of justice, rather than forcing them to comply with an outside, legal-centered idea of what justice means. They also recommended creating specialized Trafficking in Persons courts to reduce delays and exposure to re-traumatization, as well as expanding digital testimony options and normalizing remote testimonies so survivors can pursue legal action if they want to without having to be physically present in a potentially traumatizing space
During the interventions, a survivor leader participating in the dialogue responded to the presentations with an incredibly important and necessary message around how the justice system can be harmful to survivors when they are treated as evidence not as humans, and how important it is for governments to invest in survivor leaders & survivor inclusion in designing the justice system practices so as to protect and prevent the re-traumatization of survivors
A few of the interventions highlighted the critical issue of the difficulty in navigating survivor repatriation and legal proceedings because trafficking typically involves crossing borders and the origin and destination countries are not always aligned in their approaches to addressing trafficking or willing to cooperate. This can make it hard to adequately center survivor's needs.
A representative from a 400-year-old women's rights organization aptly examined the economic system and its role in perpetuating trafficking. She noted how lucrative trafficking is, earning traffickers billions each year, and how we need to design a social economy to disincentivize this immensely profitable and violent crime.
One intervention touched on the importance of funding grassroots orgs so that they have funds comparable to the level of abundance that traffickers have
A China-based CSO spoke about trafficking and forced labor embedded in mineral and construction supply chains. The org's representative shared the anonymous story of a man who migrated to work and had his passport immediately confiscated. He was forced to work 11 hours a day for 173 days straight without a single day of rest. Experiences like this are enabled by a lack of access to safe migration pathways distinct from labor. A migrant's legal status in their destination country is frequently dependent entirely on their employer—a fact that exploitative employers can manipulate and exploit to coerce people into forced labor.
There is evidence of countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, being complicit in trafficking. This state complicity is driven by the billions of dollars brought into the countries by trafficking-related crimes each year.
The best way to address and prevent trafficking is to address the vulnerabilities that lead to trafficking in the first place: poverty, conflict, political instability, lack of education and job opportunities in one's home community.
A young survivor who spoke up and shared a brief version of her story and her perspectives on what is needed to protect survivors shared about the importance of emotional support for survivors, about creating opportunities for activities that help survivors re-build self confidence and making sure survivors feel supported, understood, and never alone. She also spoke to the importance of using the word "survivor" rather than "victim," because while the word victim can inspire compassion in people, it reminds survivors of the pain.
One intervention suggested proactive digital surveillance of recruitment platforms, monitoring and flagging specific recruitment patterns that have been found to signify fraud and risk for trafficking, including background checks for any companies recruiting online and a public blacklist of companies found to be committing scams and human rights violations.
Another intervention called attention to a critical gap: people with disabilities are incredibly vulnerable to modern slavery and human trafficking, and yet they are rarely included in the list of vulnerable people.
A few concerns about how the meeting went:
One source of frustration was how the UNODC staff answered questions. Various civil society organizations asked important questions, such as what the UN is doing to address the women's rights aspect of their anti-trafficking work or what the UN is doing to combat the misuse of AI to carry out online scams, and in response to both of these questions and others of equal importance, inquirers received variations of the same answer—a vague reassurance that they were taking the asker's concerns seriously and were actively working on legislation or recommendations for member states or compiling best practices
Another concern was the lack of multi-lingual interpretation for the dialogue. This limits the scope of perspectives and experiences that can enter the conversation and influence policy around trafficking in persons
Many of the attending organizations expressed concerns around civil society's inability to participate in the actual working group dedicated to addressing trafficking in persons. The constructive dialogue was created as a way to gather and incorporate the perspectives and knowledge of civil society, however the removal of this forum from the working group delays the integration of time sensitive on-the-ground understandings and runs the risk of civil society's messages being obscured in translation because grassroots voices are not directly present to speak for themselves in the working group room.
Climate change was only mentioned once, offhand and not in-depth, near the end of the interventions portion of the meeting. Climate change is a major and increasingly impactful and urgent driving force behind vulnerabilities to trafficking. Crop failure due to changing weather patterns often pushes people into debt bondage, climate change-related disasters force people to migrate, making them vulnerable to trafficking especially if they don't have proper documentation, and there are so many more variations of these experiences and interconnections between the climate crisis and risk for ending up in modern slavery. This discussion's noticeable absence from the constructive dialogue revealed a troubling lack of intersectionality in the UN's approach to addressing various global issues.
Constructive Dialogue on the Smuggling of Migrants
On Monday, October 13th, an Empowerment Collective representative virtually attended the UN Constructive Dialogue on the Smuggling of Migrants. The focus for the 2025 constructive dialogue was legislative approaches and challenges related to the smuggling of migrants. Here are some of the key points that participating UNODC staff and civil society contributors brought to the table:
Overview of the review mechanism for the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC): 98 states (66%) are in active review for the Smuggling of Migrants protocol
Not all states have completed the Smuggling of Migrants questionnaire, but so far 19 states have reported encountering difficulties in implementing the provisions of the Smuggling of Migrants (SoM) protocol, and 26 states have reported the need for technical assistance to effectively implement the SoM protocol
Modupe Adelanwa, a representative from the Network of Civil Society Organizations Against Child Trafficking, Abuse, and Labor, spoke to the ties between ongoing wars and an increase in organized crime, including migrant smuggling. With this they emphasized the importance of prosecuting smugglers and their networks, providing safe and legal pathways for migration, and ending root causes including poverty and conflict
Ibrahim Yusuf, founder and director of the Triumphant Youth Foundation, spoke about the high levels of illiteracy in northern Nigeria and the impacts of that on increasing migrant smuggling. He also shared that Nigeria has good legislation around migrant smuggling but that the implementation is very weak—an issue that many countries globally share.
Many CSO representatives emphasized the importance of recognizing that many survivors of smuggling were first victims of economic hardships and that we need to look at and address the root causes to successfully eradicate migrant smuggling.
There was significantly more discussion around climate change in this constructive dialogue than in the last. Participants named climate change as one of the major driving factors for vulnerability to smuggling and addressed the need to create sustainable solutions.
The panel discussion portion of the constructive dialogue featured five panelists: Nigat Global Initiative, Research Group on Interaction and Social Change of the University of Barcelona, and Prevention of People Trafficking and People Smuggling Secretariat, Eswatini.
Key points from presentations include the importance of legislation that protects and does not criminalize survivors, the issue of countries not having clear definitions of trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants in their legislation and lumping the two together, the necessity that countries work together to address migrant smuggling and prevent legal loopholes that traffickers can exploit because the crime is inherently cross-border, and how the system leads families to pay twice—once to smugglers and again to authorities to bring loved ones home.
The panelist from Nigat Global Initiative, Ethiopia, shared a case study, the story of an anonymous 26 year old who was promised a digital marketing job in Southeast Asia, but upon arrival she had her passport taken and she was forced to work 14 hours a day in a scam center. Even after she was able to escape, she faced long delays in returning home because of challenges in getting proper travel documents, and she faced immense stigma when she returned to her community because of what she'd been forced to do.
A member of the survivor leadership council at Hope for Justice highlighted the critical point that legislation and policy fall short if they are designed and implemented without the involvement of survivors; survivors bring not only lived experience but also deep and nuanced expertise
Anna Alvazzi del Frate, founder of Kennis Knowledge for Safety and Good Governance, raised the important question of how we measure progress in involving CSOs in the creation, implementation, and evaluation of legislative approaches to addressing the smuggling of migrants, as well as how we advance knowledge-building in the field while balancing bringing more introductory knowledge to wider audiences while also ensuring those with more advanced understanding are able to deepen and bring more nuance to their knowledge so they can have increased impact on the ground.
A representative from the Global AI Center illuminated attendees on the possibilities of using AI for good, harnessing its capabilities to more effectively track and prosecute smugglers and traffickers
Uchenna Juan Augustine, Founder of the Stop the Cycle initiative, explained how people are driven into organized crime through a search for better livelihoods, because they do not live in environments that enable them and support them in pursuing ethical and legal economic opportunity
Dr. Sussan Agu of LARDI, Nigeria brought attention to the consistent blurring of lines between migrants who have been smuggled and those doing the smuggling, and the importance of establishing guidelines for law enforcement approaches to this so they don't wrongfully criminalize smuggled persons
Kiara Lianne Titze of Servas International called out the common tendency to talk about protecting migrants after they are already on the move, and suggested that we focus instead on the root causes—namely poverty and the climate crisis—that force migration. She wrapped up her point with a call to action for governments and organizations to invest in climate action now, and to invest in women and girls.
Another speaker from Social Empowerment for Economic Development (SEED) added on the need for investment in small businesses and community-based economic growth.
A few concerns about how the meeting went:
This constructive dialogue elicited many of the same frustrations as the last— lack of direct and informative answers to questions, lack of multi-lingual interpretation, and civil society's lack of permission to participate directly in the working group addressing the smuggling of migrants.
This constructive dialogue was also interrupted, for online participants, by a frustrating number of technical difficulties. A significant chunk of speaker audio was lost, making it difficult at times to follow and engage in the dialogue to the fullest extent.
UN Reports for Further Understanding
Global Report on Trafficking in Persons - UNODC 2024
Criminalization of Smuggling of Migrants and Related Conduct - UNODC 2025
As you can likely tell from the sheer quantity and breadth of topics discussed and points raised within these constructive dialogues, human trafficking and migrant smuggling are incredibly complex issues. These discussions barely scratched the surface of the dark realities embedded in our global systems and supply chains, but they did point us towards a key understanding that Empowerment Collective has already begun to hold and build upon in our work: the need for a shift towards a new, regenerative economic system.
Our current economic system, one that incentivizes greed and exploitation, creates vulnerabilities that lead people both to being trafficked and to becoming traffickers—and in many cases, both. To say that prosecuting traffickers is the ultimate solution assumes a deficiency of morals, not resources—which is far more often the reality—and is not a long-term solution to ending trafficking. We must work to end trafficking at the root cause, to transform the economic systems that deprive people of the key human rights they need to live and drive them into trafficking as a means of survival.
UN General Assembly Side Event
A representative from Empowerment Collective attended the high-level UN General Assembly Side Event on the role of financial sector actors in preventing and addressing contemporary forms of slavery. There, we heard perspectives from influential voices in the field including Tomoya Obokata, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, Luciana Trindade de Aguiar, UNDP/FAST Initiative, Erin Phelps, Senior Advisor to the CEO of the Freedom Fund, Miranda Pond, Loyola Law School and Lived Experience Expert, Måns Carlsson, IAST APAC Steering Committee, Muluken Yirga Dubale, Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) Secretariat, and Claudio Nardi, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Mission of Lichtenstein to the UN.
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