TRAFFICKERS are increasingly using social media, fraudulent job ads and other digital platforms to trap people in forced labour and forced criminality.
“Technology is part of the problem, but it also must be part of the solution, and no country can tackle this challenge alone,” Officials said at a World Day Against Trafficking in Persons event hosted at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
Solomon Kantha, chief of mission and sub-regional coordinator for the International Organisation for Migration, said trafficking had evolved with technology and now often begins online.
“This is the new nature and most prominent nature of trafficking that is happening,” he said, adding that exploitation was increasingly taking place “behind your mobile devices.”
Kantha said criminal networks were using deceptive recruitment offers and scam compounds to coerce victims into online fraud.
He described a survivor who had been recruited through an online job advertisement after losing work during the COVID-19 pandemic, then taken from his home country to Thailand and later moved to Myanmar, where he was forced to work in a scam compound.
“In these scam compounds, people are also placed into their nationality groups,” Kantha said, adding that victims are often forced to target people from their own countries.
He said those trapped in the compounds are stripped of their documents, threatened and made to work long hours to generate profit for traffickers.
“Victims of forced criminality are often highly educated and tech-savvy, with many holding bachelor’s or master’s degrees and backgrounds in information technology, marketing, customer service and human resources.
“They have to be experts to speak to victims as if it’s a general offer,” he said, warning that “if it is too good to be true, that’s the indicator that you can pick out.”
Kantha said the scale of the problem was expanding rapidly. He cited IOM data showing the agency had assisted more than 3,500 victims of trafficking for forced criminality across Southeast Asia between 2022 and 2025, from 39 countries.
He also cited UNODC data, as referenced by IOM, estimating annual losses from scam offences across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand at between $88 billion and $114 billion in 2025 alone.
“Criminalising victims only strengthens criminal networks,” he said, arguing that survivors trapped in scam compounds should be protected rather than punished.
“They deserve protection, not punishment,” he said.
Marie Cauchois, head of the UNODC office in the Pacific, said traffickers and organised crime groups had adapted quickly to digital connectivity.
“Technology has transformed the way people connect, seek employment and access opportunities,” she said, adding that the same tools were being exploited to lure victims into forced labour, sexual exploitation and forced criminality.
Cauchois said the response had to combine stronger criminal justice action with prevention and victim protection.
“Our response must be victim-centred,” she said, adding that stronger cooperation was needed across government, law enforcement, labour agencies, civil society, media and social partners.
Both speakers said better data, stronger awareness campaigns, cross-border cooperation and closer partnerships with technology companies, financial institutions and communities would be needed to confront trafficking for forced criminality in the Pacific.
Kantha urged people to stay alert online, saying the goal was to ensure that “no one in Fiji or anywhere else in the Pacific is ever trapped behind a scam.”
