Sunshine flooded the halls of an annex room in the United Nations General Assembly Building. The place was packed. The flags of the member nations of the UN were visible through the tall windows, and citizens of well more than a dozen countries crowded around a podium at the back of the room. We were there to see Atefeh Riazi, the UN’s Chief Information Technology Officer, deliver a keynote speech for a panel called “Human Trafficking as a Form of Violence Against Women and Girls.” Speaking personally, as an Iranian national who is new to New York City and to the human rights community, I felt proud to see a fellow Iranian woman ascend the stage.
But what she said next made my blood chill. She explained how an enormous global network of human trafficking has arisen in the past decades, a transnational industry – one of the largest in the world. In recent years, the rise of global communication technologies, particularly the subset of the internet known as the Dark Web, has greatly aided the human trafficking industry. This, Riazi emphasized, was especially true in regards to sex trafficking of women and girls. Her speec
Atefeh Riazi at UN’s 60th Commission on the Status of Women, giving a keynote speech at the “Human Trafficking as a Form of Violence Against Women & Girls” panel.
h was a call to action, and the room was filled with people who were ostensibly there because they had the ability and the desire to effect change
But as I looked around the room, watching people staring at their phones, and as I heard speaker after speaker in the talks following Riazi emphasize the same old talking points, the same monotonous data, and the same circular logic, my heart began to sink. Riazi’s speech had been powerful, informative, and stirring, but the larger bureacratic structure around it did not allow us to act upon her words. It seemed to me that many of the speakers who followed – dignitaries from ministries of state of governments like the Phillipines, Ghana, and India – were more concerned with justifying their own governmental positions than with addressing specifically how we can use technology to make real change.
Riazi was right that the internet and other communication technologies have been useful for criminals involved in human trafficking. But it is also true that these same technologies can be used in the fight against these crimes. She stated that UN’s Digital Blue Helmet peacekeepers are capable to create a “light web” to counterattack the evil part of the dark web.
“We do have the peacekeepers on the ground. But if you look at peace in the physical world and peace in the cyber world, those are two different thing.Digital Blue Helmets will be our experts who can operate in the cyber world protecting the UN from cyber intrusion, and helping our substantive arms in delivering their missions in the cyber world.”
She specifically encouraged high tech companies to unite with UN, NGOs and governmental agencies to find constructive ways to fight against sex trafficking on the Dark Web and online for a like Backpage.com. As a former employee of a high tech company, I very much agreed with Riazi’s argument. But I began to wonder what concrete steps we could take right now, not just at some point in the future. In My future blog posts shares some early thoughts on this matter.
The landscape for adequately combatting human trafficking online seems to be both promising and challenging. It would seem that for the UN to develop a system of “online peacekeepers” it would be a costly effort for an already cash-strapped institution. Eleanor Cockbain provides an alternative to costly methods of tracking and analysis and tracking through Social Network Analysis (SNA). SNA allowed police in the United Kingdom to develop intricate networks of people who both facilitated and were victims of child sex trafficking “without need for additional software or training”.
SNA could be a useful tool for the United Nations, however I do not see much progress in this realm without political support at the state-level. Unfortunately, from what I read, there does not seem to be much support at that level as states have used these forums to defend their records on terrorism as opposed to engaging in meaningful discussion about best-practices.
Very interesting to learn that the UN is establishing “Digital Blue Helmets” as “peacekeepers” in the cyber world (cue let’s-form-another-task-force joke). As Raizi described, the power of global connectivity cuts both ways as an indispensable tool for both criminal and law enforcement. My initial concern is the UN’s ability to bring in the right tech talent, the true digital elite who understand the cutting edge of the dark web, though the recognition of the need for Digital Blue Helmets is important in of itself. Calls for public private partnerships have dominated recent discourse about UN’s 2030 Agenda — realizing cooperation between tech companies, NGOs, government and IGOs to combat human trafficking would allow law enforcement to gain the advantage in this battle.
Kathy thanks for your comment. “let’s-form-another-task-force joke” made me laugh :)). I think UN’s new initiative has been to some extent promising at least in bringing tech talent. I don’t know how they go around the UN’s crazy bureaucracy though. Because I’m not sure if applying these cutting-edge fast changing tech solutions could be feaisble in the current conventional system in UN. You might find these interesting: http://www.unicef.org/innovation/ , http://innovation.unhcr.org/ , http://opencamps.org/ (All UN initiatives)
Gotta echo Kathy’s concern on this one. The UN makes agencies/task forces for everything without a tangible objective and / or result! I’m also pretty miffed by the idea that we can use social media to solve something as HUGE as sex trafficking. Digital tools =/ social media despite what Alec Ross-types would have you believe. Cockbain’s Social Network Analysis (SNA), while informative, cannot necessarily be replicated and applied across all instances. Do we know if Interpol or another agency has something more robust that they use to connect these networks?